52 Quotes by Peter Wessel Zapffe

If one regards life and death as natural processes, the metaphysical dread vanishes, and one obtains peace of mind.

Cultural history, as well as observation of ourselves and others, allow the following answer: Most people learn to save themselves by artificially limiting the content of consciousness.

The human yearning is not merely marked by a ‘striving toward’, but equally by an ’escape from.

Despite his new eyes, man was still rooted in matter, his soul spun into it and subordinated to its blind laws. And yet he could see matter as a stranger, compare himself to all phenomena, see through and locate his vital processes. He comes to nature as an unbidden guest, in vain extending his arms to beg conciliation with his maker: Nature answers no more, it preformed a miracle with man, but later did not know him.

He is the universe’s helpless captive, kept to fall into nameless possibilities.

He is mighty in the near world, but curses his might as purchased with his harmony of soul, his innocence, his inner peace in life’s embrace.

Man is the ultimate tragic being, because he has learned enough about the Earth to realise the Earth would be better off without the presence of humankind.