Existential Crisis Quotes

“Embrace the void and have the courage to exist.”
― Dan Howell

“I don’t know who I am, and who I’m not, I don’t know who I’m supposed to be, and I miss who I was; I miss it every day, Kate, but there’s no place for that August anymore. No place for the version of me who wanted to go to school, and have a life, and feel human, because this world doesn’t need that August. It needs someone else.”
― Victoria Schwab, Our Dark Duet

“I live to enjoy life by the littlest things, feeling the grass between my toes, breathing fresh air, watching the wind sway the trees, enjoying the company of loved ones, a deep conversation, getting lost in a good book, going for a walk in nature, watching my kids grow up. Just the feeling itself of being alive, the absolute amazing fact that we are here right now, breathing, thinking, doing.”
― Marigold Wellington

“There is absolutely no worse death curse than the humdrum daily existence of the living dead.”
― Anthon St. Maarten

“I do the splits perfectly in PE. I lose half a pound in two days. I get the spinach and pig-meat frittata from the lo-carb section for lunch. And no-one else knows. I mentally construct a MyFace status, polishing the memories carefully until they shine. The need to record my life is as fundamental as my need to breathe. Without MyFace, I'm floating. I have nothing to anchor me down, to prove I exist.”
― Louise O'Neill

“Still, she really did seem to be absurdly into this. It was almost existentially unsettling, that two people in such close physical proximity could be experiencing the same moment so differently.”
― Kristen Roupenian, You Know You Want This

“Are you broken? Good. Now fall apart completely. You will realize that what has fallen apart is not you. It's just a thin external coating that hides your pure, eternal and ever-shining being.”
― Shunya

“Long ago I thought I knew myself, now my knowledge about myself is nothing but a empty shell…”
― Ryan Gelpke, Peruvian Nights

“I couldn't bear being this suburban mom who was alternating between screaming at her kids and being the heartfelt, privileged witness to their joy. But the people around us - the haranguing mothers and sexless fathers - I kept trying to find ways that I was better than these people, but all I kept landing on was the fact that the common denominator was me.”
― Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Fleishman Is in Trouble

“We all have to die one day, we might as well die with some obscure meaning attached to it.”
― Ryan Gelpke, Peruvian Nights

“Death is what gives our lives urgency, an awareness that time isn't infinite.”
― Ryan Gelpke, Peruvian Nights

“Can I propose a toast to the fragility of life and the weight of mortality?”
― Ryan Gelpke, Peruvian Nights

“I am not alone. Existing in this melancholic world causes numerous individuals to feel remorseful and even harbor resentment. Contemplating the world fills me with melancholy. I sense a profound disconnection from the world. Feeling completely drained by my internal and external despair and indifference. I find myself filled with regret and eagerly await the conclusion. I believe my overwhelming anxiety has transformed into anhedonia and depression. Feelings of emptiness and not fitting in are common to all people. Feeling like an outsider hinders connection with others. Once quite the extrovert. I have always experienced a deep sense of disconnection, but at this stage of my life, numerous things have gone awry, making it almost unbearable.”
― Jonathan Harnisch

“All is gloom. The grave is at the door. And now, when weighed down by the pains and aches of old age, when the head inclines to the feet, when the beginning and ending of human existence meet, and helpless infancy and painful old age combine together—at this time, this most needful time, the time for the exercise of that tenderness and affection which children only can exercise toward a declining parent—my poor old grandmother, the devoted mother of twelve children, is left all alone, in yonder little hut, before a few dim embers”
― Fredrick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom

“Oh, why can I not simply cease to be,
Dissolve into the void, eternally free?
No longer seen, no longer heard,
A wisp of smoke, a fading word.”
― Sreena K.S., Let It Be Free: A Poetic Tapestry

“Nobody says it, of course, it’s all ‘I’m so excited; I’m so happy for you!’ But deep down, every friend is thinking ‘Shit. Everything’s changing. I’m going to lose my mate to this person who could absolutely be a total and utter bastard. And I’ve got to smile throughout it while I let them go into the arms of a potential monster. And what does that mean for us?’ Poke writing a speech, I would actually like to spend my time having an existential crisis in peace.”
― Lia Louis, Dear Emmie Blue

“Es el tiempo tiempo, es el tiempo que no muere,
soy yo el que muere sabiendo que existe el tiempo.”
― Elvis Dino Esquivel

“Just thinking about the existential dilemmas we humans face during our lifetimes when all our problems won’t matter in next 20 years and we won’t matter in next 50 years. All that is found is lost in the river of time.”
― Huseyn Raza

“We are yet to comprehend the unexplainable buried deep into the unreachable abysses of our minds. Something—swerving inside—which deprives you of peace even when you feel content with the life you have, something which casts the stormy dark clouds over your existence, something which devours your tranquility like a black hole does to whatever inches towards it. Incessant struggle with the lurking demons makes you realise your powerlessness, coercing you to make peace with the inconspicuous, the unexplainable, the inseparable embed within you. And it gradually thrives enshrouding the purpose of your existence.”
― Renuka Goria

“To live a meaningful life, the existentialist believed, we must confront the fact that we will one day no longer be around. In other words, we must begin at the end, for the end is the beginning.”
― Joshua Krook

“Another abyss that we have cross, another abyss that we have to stare into in the hope it won't stare back to us.”
― Ryan Gelpke, Peruvian Nights

“Watching as the water moves along I am once again reminded of the endless passing of time, the cruelty of it, how curial and amazing is it that no moment can last forever, and thus we have to learn to live with our mortality,”
― Ryan Gelpke, Peruvian Nights

“At times I want to scream, scream at this illogical shit, at this wanton terror! Every comedy seems to end as a bad joke, no actually it ends as a horror story! An illogical one at that!”
― Ryan Gelpke, Peruvian Nights

“A man stares at himself in the mirror and peels away all the layers. But the person he sees doesn't feels like someone he knows. He feels like he is looking at a total stranger.”
― Ryan Gelpke, Peruvian Nights

“There is no time in what you are going through. Your suffering is a place, and you don't know whether you can ever leave this place. You don't even have enough hope to wish that it be over faster. Faster doesn't exist, any more than time itself. You are not alive enough to measure it. You live in a present of incessant pain.”
― Grégoire Courtois, The Laws of the Skies

“I spend long hours contemplating my existence and the meaning of this isolation. The thoughts are dark and heavy, often leading me down spirals of despair.”
― Rove Monteux, Living in a Bunker: A diary of the life in a bunker

“He thought about the loss of humanity that was eating away at the world and the loss of the connection to the self that ate away at the consciousness which animated all into being. He thought about how the collective psyche was teetering on that knife’s edge between a desperation to live and a desperation to die. And here he was at the cusp of it himself.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“There was only that bobbing bundle of stringy, dirty-blonde hair fading into a sea of other heads bobbing and faces coming and going, of storylines intersecting and entwining and then fraying only to become irretrievably lost in the interminable wave-pattern of curiosities fleeting and nothingness everlasting.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause

“The Edge of Reason by Stewart Stafford

I do not want to die or take my own life,
I cling to the outside of skyscraper metal,
Thick, choking smoke rakes my shoulder,
Scorching flames lash my back and legs.

I showered, dressed and went to work,
I arrived early, said hello, found my desk,
Then the building shifted, smiles faded,
Everything changed, and here we are.

God, please take me quickly, I beg you,
Bless my loved ones, I hope they understand,
A Rorschach test for shocked rubberneckers,
I let the air pressure suck me out and drop.

The initial relief of vacating impossibility,
Turns to violent buffeting in wind currents,
Clothes ripped off as I spin, falling faster,
Crowds point, the ground rushes towards me.

© 2024, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“The superior man, one who would follow the Iron Way, he must have struggle, he must have a goal, an impossible goal to fight for, and die for if needed. This is what he craves, not the green pasture of the cows.”
― Toby R. Beeny, The Iron Way: A Narrative of Crisis