“What keeps all living things busy and in motion is the striving to exist. But when existence is secured, they do not know what to do: that is why the second thing that sets them in motion is a striving to get rid of the burden of existence, not to feel it any longer, 'to kill time', i.e. to escape boredom.”
― The World as Will and Representation, Volume I
― The World as Will and Representation, Volume I
“The real is what resists symbolization absolutely.”
― The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book 1, Freud's Papers on Technique, 1953-1954
― The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book 1, Freud's Papers on Technique, 1953-1954
“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.”
― Civilization and Its Discontents
― Civilization and Its Discontents
“Human life must be some kind of mistake. The truth of this will be sufficiently obvious if we only remember that man is a compound of needs and necessities hard to satisfy; and that even when they are satisfied, all he obtains is a state of painlessness, where nothing remains to him but abandonment to boredom. This is direct proof that existence has no
real value in itself; for what is boredom but the feeling of the emptiness of life? If life—the craving for which is the very essence of our being—were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.”
― Studies in Pessimism: The Essays
real value in itself; for what is boredom but the feeling of the emptiness of life? If life—the craving for which is the very essence of our being—were possessed of any positive intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom at all: mere existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.”
― Studies in Pessimism: The Essays
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