10 Quotes For When You Are Feeling *Existential*

What is life, anyways? Who am I? What is my purpose? Am I enough? What is the human experience? We’ve all been here- introspective and questioning what our lives mean and what it’s all for.

These questions and the feelings they leave with us can be difficult to navigate. When we are left with feelings of despair and hopelessness, these thoughts can become obsessive and intrusive. Different stages of life and different experiences can trigger existential thinking. As someone that spends way too much time in this state of mind and knows how challenging these feelings can be, I would like to offer you a few quotes that I have found helpful to changing my perspective and keeping me focused. It is so easy to become overwhelmed and anxious when the existential dread sets in.

On the flip side, questioning your purpose and role within humanity can also provide opportunities to turn inward and reflect on ourselves and our progress on becoming the person that we want to be. Instead of dread, we can view the world with awe and admire the expansiveness of life and the entirety of the universe. We can get lost in the wonderment of the unknown and find solace in knowing that if even for a small moment in time, we get to experience the magic of conscious sentience. When we look at these questions without dread and fear, we can be present in the moment and experience life to our fullest capabilities.

1. “We are our choices” – Jean-Paul Sartre

2. “One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, and compassion”– Simone de Beauvoir

3. “The world and I are within one another.”
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty

4. “Every single human soul has more meaning and value than the whole of history.”
― Nikolai Berdyaev

5. “Become who you are!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche,

6. “But things worked out. Everything works out. Though sometimes they work out sideways.”
― Knut Hamsun

7. “Everyone likes happiness, no one likes pain. But you can’t have a rainbow without a little rain.”
― Ingmar Bergman

8. “Each suburban wife struggles with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night- she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question– ‘Is this all?”

― Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique

9. “But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”
― Martin Luther King, Jr.

10. “The things you do for yourself are gone when you are gone, but the things you do for others remain as your legacy.”
― Kalu Ndukwe Kalu

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