Big Books of 2026

Sam > Sam's Quotes

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  • #1
    Albert Camus
    “The literal meaning of life is whatever you're doing that prevents you from killing yourself.”
    ― Albert Camus
    tags: existentialism, meaning-of-life, suicide, witty
    991 likes

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  • #2
    Richard Dawkins
    “There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point… The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.”
    ― Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
    tags: atheism, existentialism, follow-your-bliss, self-actualization, self-determination
    1486 likes

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  • #3
    Cornelia Funke
    “Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us?”
    ― Cornelia Funke
    tags: books, character, cornelia-funke, existentialism, words, writers, writing
    1186 likes

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  • #4
    Albert Camus
    “Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.”
    ― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
    1209 likes

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  • #5
    Woody Allen
    “I took a test in Existentialism. I left all the answers blank and got 100.”
    ― Woody Allen
    tags: existentialism, humor, uncertainty
    900 likes

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  • #6
    Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
    “Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.”
    ― Kurt Vonnegut
    tags: existentialism, life, philosophy, wisdom
    749 likes

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  • #7
    Samuel Beckett
    “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
    ― Samuel Beckett
    tags: existentialism, failure, inspirational
    811 likes

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  • #8
    Friedrich Nietzsche
    “One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.”
    ― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
    tags: existentialism, student, teacher
    853 likes

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  • #9
    Albert Camus
    “I rebel; therefore I exist.”
    ― Albert Camus
    tags: existentialism, rebel
    892 likes

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  • #10
    Anton Chekhov
    “The world is, of course, nothing but our conception of it.”
    ― Anton Chekhov
    689 likes

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  • #11
    Umberto Eco
    “I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.”
    ― Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum
    tags: existentialism
    736 likes

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  • #12
    Jean-Paul Sartre
    “Life has no meaning a priori… It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.”
    ― Jean-Paul Sartre
    tags: existentialism, humanism, post-modernism
    647 likes

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  • #13
    Betty Friedan
    “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
    tags: existentialism, feminism, housekeeping, inspirational, marriage, parenting, purpose
    591 likes

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  • #14
    Frank Zappa
    “So many books, so little time.”
    ― Frank Zappa
    tags: books, humor
    151322 likes

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  • #15
    John Steinbeck
    “I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen.”
    ― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent
    6735 likes

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  • #16
    John Steinbeck
    “Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.”
    ― John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
    tags: loneliness, people, scared, world
    4263 likes

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  • #17
    And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.
    “And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.”
    ― John Steinbeck, East of Eden
    4850 likes

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  • #18
    John Steinbeck
    “There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.”
    ― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
    3540 likes

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  • #19
    John Steinbeck
    “It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.”
    ― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent
    tags: absence, loss
    2685 likes

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  • #20
    John Steinbeck
    “But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.”
    ― John Steinbeck, East of Eden
    tags: choice, freedom, freedom-of-choice, hebrew, language, timshel
    2659 likes

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  • #21
    John Steinbeck
    “And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.”
    ― John Steinbeck, East of Eden
    2479 likes

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  • #22
    John Steinbeck
    “What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.”
    ― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America
    tags: contrast, life, opposites, summer, winter
    1953 likes

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  • #23
    John Steinbeck
    “Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.”
    ― John Steinbeck
    1621 likes

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  • #24
    John Steinbeck
    “I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found.”
    ― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America
    1561 likes

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  • #25
    John Steinbeck
    “I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. . . . Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. . . . There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?”
    ― John Steinbeck, East of Eden
    1663 likes

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  • #26
    John Steinbeck
    “There's more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty.”
    ― John Steinbeck, East of Eden
    tags: truth
    1498 likes

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  • #27
    John Steinbeck
    “Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you seem large and tragic? ...Well, think about it. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.”
    ― John Steinbeck, East of Eden
    1498 likes

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  • #28
    John Steinbeck
    “I guess there are never enough books.”
    ― John Steinbeck, A John Steinbeck Encyclopedia
    tags: books, reading, sufficiency
    1113 likes

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  • #29
    John Steinbeck
    “I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment.”
    ― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America
    tags: awesome
    1141 likes

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  • #30
    John Steinbeck
    “To be alive at all is to have scars.”
    ― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent
    1139 likes



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existentialism
meaning-of-life
suicide
witty
atheism
follow-your-bliss
self-actualization
self-determination
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character
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post-modernism
feminism
housekeeping
marriage
parenting
purpose
loneliness
people
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hebrew
language
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