Skye Cleary > Skye's Quotes

“Her experience had been of a kind to teach her, rightly or wrongly, that the doubtful honor of a brief transit through a sorry world hardly called for effusiveness, even when the path was suddenly irradiated at some half-way point by daybeams rich as hers. But her strong sense that neither she nor any human being deserved less than was given, did not blind her to the fact that there were others receiving less who had deserved much more. And in being forced to class herself among the fortunate she did not cease to wonder at the persistence of the unforeseen, when the one to whom such unbroken tranquility had been accorded in the adult stage was she whose youth had seemed to teach that happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.”
― Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge

“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”
― Albert Camus

“Live to the point of tears.”
― Albert Camus

“You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.”
― Albert Camus, The Fall

“But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.”
― Albert Camus

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
― Albert Camus

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”
― Albert Camus

“Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.”
― Albert Camus, Notebooks 1935-1942

“Friendship is less simple. It is long and hard to obtain but when one has it there's no getting rid of it; one simply has to cope with it. Don't think for a minute that your friends will telephone you every evening, as they ought to, in order to find out if this doesn't happen to be the evening when you are deciding to commit suicide, or simply whether you don't need company, whether you are not in the mood to go out. No, don't worry, they'll ring up the evening you are not alone, when life is beautiful. As for suicide, they would be more likely to push you to it, by virtue of what you owe to yourself, according to them. May heaven protect us, cher Monsieur, from being set upon a pedestal by our friends!”
― Albert Camus, The Fall

“There is a life and there is a death, and there are beauty and melancholy between.”
― Albert Camus, Notebooks 1935-1942

“Invisible threads are the strongest ties.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life

“Life has become a bitter drink to me, and yet it must be taken in drops, counted one by one.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life

“It isn't at all difficult for philosophy to begin. Far from it: it begins with nothing and can accordingly always begin. What seems so difficult to philosophy and the philosophers is to stop.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life

“I choose one thing: always to have the laughter on my side.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life

“In my dream, in my last morning-dream, I stood today on a promontory— beyond the world; I held a pair of scales, and weighed the world."

Alas, that the rosy dawn came too early to me: she glowed me awake, the jealous one! Jealous is she always of the glows of my morning-dream.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Peter Koestenbaum also elaborated on the importance of others, particularly romantic lovers, in the existential context. Love is the choice to create and reflect each other mutually, verifying and illuminating each other's uniqueness because this is how we learn that we exist and who we are. A key theme of authentic love is resistance between, but welcoming of, two independent consciousness acting like positive and negative magnets within a single magnetic field.”
― Skye Cleary, Existentialism and Romantic Love

“According to Bela Szabados, it can be dangerous to ignore philosophers' personalities because philosophizing is a personal interpretation of truth.”
― Skye Cleary, Existentialism and Romantic Love

“The existentialists' view of love is not romantic, because they do not believe in love as an abstract force or amorous sunset walks along the beach. However, Cox also said, "if your idea of romance is somewhat more gothic and stormy, full of heartache, yearning and the thwarted desire to possess breaking up, making up and breaking up again, tears before bedtime and tears in the rain, then maybe it is romantic".”
― Skye Cleary, Existentialism and Romantic Love