5 Quotes by Cormac McCarthy about existentialism

  • Author Cormac McCarthy
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    The priest therefore saw what the anchorite could not. That God needs no witness. Neither to himself nor against. The truth is rather that if there were no God then there could be no witness for there could be no identity to the world but only each man's opinion of it. The priest saw that there is no man who is elect because there is no man who is not. To God every man is a heretic.

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  • Author Cormac McCarthy
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    The things I believed in dont exist any more. It's foolish to pretend that they do. Western Civilization finally went up in smoke in the chimneys at Dachau but I was too infatuated to see it. I see it now.

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  • Author Cormac McCarthy
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    Maybe it's not logical. I don't know. I don't care. I've been asked didnt I think it odd that I should be present to witness the death of everything and I do think it's odd but that doesnt mean it's not so. Someone has to be here.

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  • Author Cormac McCarthy
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    To seek out the upright. No fall butpreceded by a declination. He took great marching steps into the nothingness,counting them against his return. Eyes closed, arms oaring. Upright to what?Something nameless in the night, lode or matrix. To which he and the stars werecommon satellite. Like the great pendulum in its rotunda scribing through the longday movements of the universe of which you may say it knows nothing and yetknow it must.

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  • Author Cormac McCarthy
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    The truth is that the forms I see have been slowly emptied out. They no longer have any content. They are shapes only. A train, a wall, a world. Or a man. A thing dangling in senseless articulation in a howling void. No meaning to its life. Its words. Why would I seek the company of such a thing? Why?

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