Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It Quotes

“Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“The meaning of life is not something we look for, it is something we create.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“One thing that struck me as I went over my collection of aphorisms and quotes is how often the paramount value of fully engaging in the present crops up and the various routes different philosophers take to arrive at this value. Epicurus makes it a centerpiece of his philosophy by counseling us to cease from always wanting something more than or different from what we have right now. Marcus Aurelius hits this idea even more forcefully by advising us to act as if every action were our last. Millennia later, Henry David Thoreau articulates it with both simplicity and passion in his admonition to “launch yourself on every wave.” And the idea is catapulted into the transcendental realm in Wittgenstein’s breathtaking declaration, “[E]ternal life belongs to those who live in the present.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“Everydayness” is a key concept in Existentialism. It describes the way we get so immersed in the routines and roles of our daily lives that we never experience full consciousness of who we are and what choices are available to us.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“I wonder if I have a problem. I definitely have a tendency to seek spiritual inspiration from super-rational thinkers rather than from rabbis and priests and theologians.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live

“When the German twentieth-century playwright Bertolt Brecht was asked what he thought of ethics, he replied, “First grub, then ethics.” He was implying that ethical decision-making may only be a luxury reserved for those of us who do not need to struggle simply to stay alive.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“We slough off the responsibility to create ourselves by shrugging and claiming, “That’s just the way I am.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“When all is said and done, this Existentialist precept resonates with me more than any other philosophy of life I know. The idea that life’s meaning is not something to look for but something to create myself feels right to me. In fact, it seems absolutely essential.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“Epicurus said something similar when he wrote, “Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“I still take great pleasure in playing around with philosophical questions, the ones that [Bertrand] Russell is the first to admit have no unequivocal answers. . . . I guess this quality makes me a Cerebral Hedonist, although some would say it makes me a mental masochist.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live

“Another possible reason we refrain from living in the present is that it is fraught with intimations of our mortality. When we are fully immersed in the here and now, we become profoundly aware of the unstoppable progression of time and change. Most of us have experienced highly charged moments of bliss occasioned by simple events—a sudden appearance of a flock of doves overhead; an astonishing performance of a passage of music; an enchanting smile on the face of a passing stranger. These moments are fleeting. That is an essential part of their intensity. But these fleeting moments leave us with a bittersweet awareness that everything ends. And with that awareness comes the inescapable knowledge of our personal finitude. We are fully cognizant of the fact that the sum of our here-and-now moments will reach their end and then we will be no more.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live

“read”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live

“Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.” .............................”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live

“Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things,” and, “Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death,” and, “Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live

“George Berkeley makes the case that all our knowledge of the world comes to us through our senses, so in the end all we’ve really got is this sense data inside our heads. We cannot claim that is a chair out there, only that we have some chair sense data in our minds. So it is impossible to claim that the chair is anything more than a bunch of sensory experiences that we cobble together in our minds and call a “chair.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live

“I felt that I was finally facing a fundamental fact of life: that everything is transient and loss is inevitable; that is just the way it is. Since most of the time I try to ignore this immutable fact, finally embracing it bore the sweetness of embracing Truth. And embracing that truth, painful as it is, can make me feel more authentically alive.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live

“little world”: “The world is a den of thieves, and night is falling. Evil breaks its chains and runs through the world like a mad dog. The poison affects us all. No one escapes. Therefore let us be happy while we are happy. Let us be kind, generous, affectionate, and good. It is necessary and not at all shameful to take pleasure in the little world.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live

“I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live

“I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live

“Through the ages, an impressive number of philosophers—from hedonists to transcendentalists—have rated friendship as life’s greatest pleasure.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live

“through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live

“If all you seek from something is pleasure, you’ll never find it. All you will feel is noia [existential boredom], often disgust. To feel pleasure in any act or activity, you have to pursue some end other than pleasure.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live

“To feel pleasure in any act or activity, you have to pursue some end other than pleasure.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live

“Nietzsche believed that what this man will find deep inside is not very pretty. He wrote that if I am diligent, in my depths I will discover my “madman,” “immoralist,” “buffoon,” and “criminal.” Only then, Nietzsche said, will I finally tune in on something of value. Then I will be ready to actualize my true nature.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live

“Ad hominem: An abbreviation for argumentum ad hominem, meaning an argument against an idea or statement based on the character of the person who authored it. It is sometimes used to discredit a philosophy of life proclaimed by someone who does not live up to it himself, as in, “He talks the talk, but he doesn’t walk the walk, so I’m not listening to his advice.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live

“Socrates: Would not he who is fitted to be a guardian, besides the spirited nature, need to have the qualities of a philosopher? Glaucon: I do not apprehend your meaning. S: The trait of which I am speaking, I replied, may be also seen in the dog, and is remarkable in the animal. G: What trait? S: Why, a dog, whenever he sees a stranger, is angry; when an acquaintance, he welcomes him, although the one has never done him any harm, nor the other any good. Did this never strike you as curious? G: The matter never struck me before; but I quite recognize the truth of your remark. S: And surely this instinct of the dog is very charming; —your dog is a true philosopher. G: Why? S: Why, because he distinguishes the face of a friend and of an enemy only by the criterion of knowing and not knowing. And must not an animal be a lover of learning who determines what he likes and dislikes by the test of knowledge and ignorance? G: Most assuredly. S: And is not the love of learning the love of wisdom, which is philosophy?”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live

“A man who strives after goodness in all his acts is sure to come to ruin, since there are so many men who are not good.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live

“Huxley not only anticipated the liberated consciousness of the 1960s he was also a major player in its creation. It was that consciousness that gave birth to the Sexual Revolution. Annulling the strictures of church and state, newly liberated folks decided that sex need not entail either sin or guilt. Lust was just plain fun, so go for it. And go for it we did in that era, right up until some of us started to sense that sex as simply a pleasurable sport did have some drawbacks. Hearts still got broken. Mutual trust became more complicated. “Open marriages” didn’t last. And a sense of isolation and loneliness descended on some of us as the concept of love became more elusive than ever. Much to our disappointment, sexual liberation turned out to come with a price tag. Even the great prophet Huxley had not forecast that.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“One thing about living in a psychological era is that few people give credence or value to a philosophical perspective. In our period, despairing of finding any meaning in life is rarely considered a sincerely held worldview; no, it is a sickness that needs to be cured. If I said to a psychiatrist that by treating existential ennui as a disease they are making the gratuitous assumption that the correct way to live is cheerfully and hopefully, they would look at me as if I was, well, sick in the head. Most shrinks presuppose that the goal of life is to become positive and to have a sense of well-being and that it is not healthy to feel or think otherwise. But what if, after philosophical contemplation, a person finds life empty? What if they cannot find any meaning in life, either rationally or in the depths of their being? Does that simply mean it’s Prozac time?”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“But the main reason we keep ducking the responsibility of self-creation is that it is super scary. If I am the master of my fate and my fate does not turn out so well, I have no one to blame but myself.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It