Gabriel Marcel > Quotes

“I almost think that hope is for the soul what breathing is for the living organism. Where hope is lacking the soul dries up and withers...”
― Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator: Introduction to the Metaphysic of Hope

“The atheist relies not on an experience but on an idea, or pseudo idea, of God: if God existed, He would have such and such characteristics; but if he had such characteristics, He could not allow etc...His judgment of incompability, in fact, is based on a judgment of implications.”
― Gabriel Marcel

“The key to the scientist's purpose is the idea that every phenomenon is the product of a certain given set of condition. In his laboratory he hopes to reconstitute the set of conditions, however complex they may be, which, once they are fully reconstituted, cannot fail to give rise to the phenomenon he is after, life. In other words he seeks to start off a mechanically fated chain-reaction; and of course, in enumerating the conditions that have made it possible for him to manufacture his phenomenon he systematically discounts the huge mental toils, the plodding, methodical research, of himself and others.

Thus, by a singular contradiction, he succeeds in convincing himself and, of course, attempts to persuade others, that he has arrived at the origin of his phenomenon; he sets out to demonstrate that everything in the universe runs perfectly smoothly by itself, without any creative power at anytime intruding.”
― Gabriel Marcel

“My freedom is not and cannot be something that I observe as I observe an outward fact; rather it must be something that I decide, moreover, without appeal. It is beyond the power of anyone to reject the decision by which I assert my freedom and this assertion is ultimately bound up with the consciousness that I have of myself.”
― Gabriel Marcel

“The wise man knows how to run his life so that contemplation is possible.”
― Gabriel Marcel

“We must, therefore, break away once and for all from the metaphors which depict consciousness as a luminous circle round which there is nothing, to its own eyes, but darkness. On the contrary, the shadow is at the centre.”
― Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having

“You know you have loved someone when you have glimpsed in them that which is too beautiful to die.”
― Gabriel Marcel, The Mystery of Being

“The obscurity of the external world is a function of my own obscurity to myself; the world has no intrinsic obscurity. Should we say that it comes to the same thing in the end? We must ask up to what point this interior opacity is a result; is it not very largely the consequence of an act? and is not this act simply sin?”
― Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having

“It is impossible to exaggerate how much better the formula es denkt in mir is than cogito ergo sum, which lets us in for pure subjectivism.”
― Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having

“March 7th It is a serious error, if I am not mistaken, to treat time as a mode of apprehension. For one is then forced to consider it also as the order according to which the subject apprehends himself, and he can only do this by breaking away from himself, as it were, and mentally severing the fundamental engagement which makes him what he is.”
― Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having

“March 5th I have no more doubts. This morning’s happiness is miraculous. For the first time I have clearly experienced grace. A terrible thing to say, but so it is. I am hemmed in at last by Christianity—in, fathoms deep. Happy to be so! But I will write no more. And yet, I feel a kind of need to write. Feel I am stammering childishly . . . this is indeed a birth. Everything is different. Now, too, I can see my way through my improvisations. A new metaphor, the inverse of the other—a world which was there, entirely present, and at last I can touch it.”
― Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having

“I cannot help recording that this illumination of my thought is for me only the extension of the Other, the only Light. I have never known such happiness. I have been playing Brahms for a long time, piano sonatas that were new to me. They will always remind me of this unforgettable time. How can I keep this feeling of being entered, of being absolutely safe—and also of being enfolded?”
― Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having

“Je ne peux rien affirmer de moi-même qui soit authentiquement moi-même.”
― Gabriel Marcel

“Philosophy is experience transmitted into thought.”
― Gabriel Marcel

“I know by my own experience how, from a stranger met by chance, there may come an irresistible appeal which overturns the habitual perspectives just as a gust of wind might tumble down the panels of a stage set - what had seemed near becomes infinitely remote and what had seemed distant seems to be close.”
― Gabriel Marcel

“The detachment of the saint springs, as one might say, from the very core of reality; it completely excludes curiosity about the universe. This detachment is the highest form of participation. The detachment of the spectator is just the opposite, it is desertion, not only in thought but in act.”
― Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having

“It is strange—and yet so clear—that I shall only continue to believe if I continue to deserve my faith. Amazing interdependence between believing and desert!”
― Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having

“The interdependence of spiritual destinies, the plan of salvation; for me, that is the sublime and unique feature of Catholicism. I was just thinking a moment ago that the spectator-attitude corresponds to a form of lust; and more than that, it corresponds to the act by which the subject appropriates the world for himself. And I now perceive the deep truth of Bérulle’s theocentrism. We are here to serve; yes, the idea of service, in every sense, must be thoroughly examined.”
― Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having

“If I have discerned rightly, there is a close bond of union between hope and certain affirmation of eternity, that is, of transcendent order.
On the other hand - as I say in Remarks on the Irreligion of Today - a world where techniques are paramount is a world given over to desire and fear; because every technique is there to serve some desire or some fear. It is perhaps characteristic of Hope to be unable either to make direct use of any technique or to call it to her aid. Hope is proper to the unarmed; it is the weapon of the unarmed, or (more exactly) it is the very opposite of a weapon and in that, mysteriously enough, its power lies. Present-day scepticism about hope is due to the essential inability to conceive that anything can be efficacious when it is no sort of a power in the ordinary sense of that word.”
― Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having

“There is no privileged state which allows us to transcend time; and this was where Proust made his great mistake. A state such as he describes has only the value of a foretaste. This notion of a foretaste is, I feel, likely to play a more and more central part in my thinking.”
― Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having

“Hope consists in asserting that there is at the heart of being, beyond all data, beyond all inventories and all calculations, a mysterious principle which is in connivance with me.”
― Gabriel Marcel

“But someone may ask, is there any real reason why these sages, whether Buddhist or Stoic, should not recapture the soul of the child? One fact prevents them, according to Wust; they have broken away from the filial relationship with the Supreme Spirit, and this alone is what enables a man to have a child-like attitude towards the ultimate secret of things. This relationship is automatically destroyed by the triumph of naturalistic philosophy, which depersonalised the supreme principle of the universe: for to this view necessity can only appear as either fate or blind chance; and a man weighed down by such a burden is in no state ever to regain his vanished delight and absolute trust. He can no longer cling to the deep metaphysical optimism, wherein the primal simplicity of the creature in the morning of life joins the simplicity of the sage - better here to call him the saint - who, after journeying through experience, returns to the original point of the circle; the happy state of childhood which is almost the lost paradise of the human mind.”
― Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having

“Time is like a well whose shaft goes down to death - to my death - to my perdition. The gulf of time: how I shudder to look down on time! My death is at its bottom and its dank breath mounts up and chills me.”
― Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having

“Some minds may think they are completely free of the kind of ideology which started with August Comte, and yet they will say, as though it were self-evident, that man advances from an infantile to an adult state of knowledge, and that the characteristic mark of the higher stage, which the "intellectual leaders" of today have reached, is simply the elimination of anthropomorphism. This presupposes the most curious temporal realism, and perhaps especially the most summary and simplicist picture of mental growth. Not only do they make a virtue of disregarding the positive and irreplaceable value of that original candour in the soul, not only do they make an idol of experience, by regarding it as the only way to spiritual dedication, but they also say in so many words that our minds are telling the time differently, since some are "more advanced", that is - whether or not this is admitted - nearer to a "terminus". And yet, by an amazing contradiction, they are forbidden to actualise that terminus even in thought. So that progress no longer consists in drawing nearer to one's end, but is described by a purely intrinsic quality of its own; although they will not consider its darker sides, such as old age and creaking joints, because they no doubt think that they are moving in a sphere where thought is depersonalised, so that these inevitable accidents of the flesh will be automatically banished.”
― Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having

“Je ne peux pas être vraiment en paix avec moi-même si je ne suis pas en paix avec mes frères.”
― Gabriel Marcel

“Characterisation is a certain kind of possession, or claim to possession, of that which cannot be possessed. It is the construction of a little abstract effigy, a model as English physicists call it, of a reality which will not lend itself to these tricks, these deceptive pretences, except in the most superficial way. Reality will only play this game with us in so far as we cut ourselves off from it, and consequently are guilty of self-desertion.”
― Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having

“Amar a alguien es decirle:
Tú no morirás jamás.”
― Gabriel Marcel, El misterio del ser

“the freedom of a people or a country be defined as absolute independence, is it not obvious that in a world like ours freedom cannot exist, not only because of inevitable economic interdependences, but because of the part played by pressure, or, less politely, by blackmail, at all levels of international intercourse?”
― Gabriel Marcel, Man Against Mass Society

“If I have discerned rightly, there is a close bond of union between hope and a certain affirmation of eternity, that is, of transcendent order.
On the other hand - as I say in Remarks on the Irreligion of Today - a world where techniques are paramount is a world given over to desire and fear; because every technique is there to serve some desire or some fear. It is perhaps characteristic of Hope to be unable either to make direct use of any technique or to call it to her aid. Hope is proper to the unarmed; it is the weapon of the unarmed, or (more exactly) it is the very opposite of a weapon and in that, mysteriously enough, its power lies. Present-day scepticism about hope is due to the essential inability to conceive that anything can be efficacious when it is no sort of a power in the ordinary sense of that word.”
― Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having

“Wherever a problem is found, I am working upon data placed before me; but at the same time, the general state of affairs authorises me to carry on as if I had no need to trouble myself with this Me who is at work: he is here simply presupposed. It is, as we have just seen, quite a different matter when the inquiry is about Being. Here the ontological status of the questioner becomes of the highest importance. Could it be said, then, that I am involving myself in an infinite regress? No, for by the very act of so conceiving the regress, I am placing myself above it.”
― Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having