Every night when I go to bed, I hope that I may never wake again, and every morning renews my grief.
written by Franz Schubert (via colettesaintyves)

Immanuel Kant hat […] den Himmel gestürmt, er hat die ganze Besatzung über die Klinge springen lassen, der Oberherr der Welt schwimmt unbewiesen in seinem Blute, es gibt jetzt keine Allbarmherzigkeit mehr, keine Vatergüte, keine jenseitige Belohnung für diesseitige Enthaltsamkeit, die Unsterblichkeit der Seele liegt in ihren letzten Zügen – das röchelt, das stöhnt – und der alte Lampe steht dabei mit seinem Regenschirm unterm Arm, als betrübter Zuschauer, und Angstschweiß und Tränen rinnen ihm vom Gesicht. Da erbarmt sich Immanuel Kant und zeigt, daß er nicht bloß ein großer Philosoph, sondern auch ein guter Mensch ist, und er überlegt, und halb gutmütig und halb ironisch spricht er: ‚der alte Lampe muß einen Gott haben, sonst kann der arme Mensch nicht glücklich sein – der Mensch soll aber auf der Welt glücklich sein – das sagt die praktische Vernunft – meinetwegen – so mag auch die praktische Vernunft die Existenz Gottes verbürgen‘. In Folge dieses Arguments, wie mit einem Zauberstäbchen, belebte er wieder den Leichnam des Deismus, den die theoretische Vernunft getötet. Hat vielleicht Kant die Resurrektion nicht bloß des alten Lampe wegen, sondern auch der Polizei wegen unternommen?
written by Heinrich Heine: Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland (via themanwearingahat)

(via universalestate)

There is a tale that Spinoza found the onions of Amsterdam particularly tasteless and accepted their insipidity as part of the price one pays for exile, for being able to live as he pleased. But he discovered one day that all along he had been eating tulip bulbs, not onions.
written by Guy Davenport, “Spinoza’s Tulips”, The Geography of the Imagination, North Point Press, San Francisco, 1981, p. 130. (via msodradek)

(via sauvenne)

My reflection on this subject starts with childhood memories. One sleeps alone, the adults continue life; the child feels the silence of his bedroom as “rumbling.” It is something resembling what one hears when one puts an empty shell close to the ear, as if the emptiness were full, as if the silence were a noise. It is something one can also feel when one thinks that even if there were nothing, the fact that “there is” is undeniable. Not that there is this or that; but the very scene of being is open: there is. In the absolute emptiness that one can imagine before creation - there is.
written by Emmanuel Levinas - Ethics and Infinity (via fuckyeahexistentialism)

You are sitting and smoking; you believe that you are sitting in your pipe, and that your pipe is smoking you; you are exhaling yourself in bluish clouds. You feel just fine in this position, and only one thing gives you worry or concern: how will you ever be able to get out of your pipe?
written by Charles Baudelaire, Artificial Paradises (via ofelija)

No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
written by John Donne (via rosenknospe)

(Source: cultofjessica, via somdomite)

If I love you more, will you suffer less?
written by Elie Wiesel quotes his five-year-old grandson at Boston University lecture series (via lunelait)

(Source: melaniekirsh, via qntessnz)

This was the state in which I was given the freedom of choice of a career. But was I still capable of making any use of such freedom? Had I still any confidence in my own capacity to achieve a real career? My valuation of myself was much more dependent on you than on anything else, such as some external success. That was strengthening for a moment, nothing more, but on the other side your weight always dragged me down much more strongly. Never shall I pass the first grade in grammar school, I thought, but I succeeded, I even got a prize; but I shall certainly not pass the entrance exam for the Gymnasium, but I succeeded; but now I shall certainly fail in the first year at the Gymnasium; no, I did not fail, and I went on and on succeeding. This did not produce any confidence, however; on the contrary, I was always convinced—and I had positive proof of it in your forbidding expression—that the more I achieved, the worse the final outcome would inevitably be.
written by Franz Kafka, Brief an den Vater