Gabriel Marcel Quotes on Life
Gabriel Marcel, often called the first French existentialist, diagnosed the spiritual condition of modern life, and the quotes gathered here present that diagnosis. Marcel argued that a life centred on function, in which persons are reduced to their roles and uses, is liable to despair, because such a world rings hollow. He saw his age as founded on the refusal to reflect, and singled out the worship of speed as a force that has changed the very rhythms of the life of the spirit for the worse. Yet Marcel was not finally a pessimist: he held that precisely a world which seems to counsel absolute despair is the only one that can give rise to an unconquerable hope. Drawn from Man Against Mass Society and his other works, these passages present modern life as endangered by functionalism and distraction, and call for reflection and hope.
Quotes
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Attributed to Gabriel Marcel:
“Being and having are the two fundamental categories of existence.”
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Attributed to Gabriel Marcel:
“Hope is for the soul what breath is for the body.”
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Attributed to Gabriel Marcel:
“I hope in thee for us.”
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“Life in a world centred on function is liable to dispair because in reality the world is empty, it rings hollow; and if it resist this temptation it is only to the extent that there comes into plat from within it and in its favour certain hidden forces which are beyond its power to conceive or to recognise.”
Wikiquote -
“the world we live in permits - and may even seem to counsel - absolute dispair, yet it is only such a world that can give rise to an unconquerable hope.”
Wikiquote -
“We are living in a world which seems to be founded on the refusal to reflect.”
Man Against Mass Society(1952) | p. 132 -
“It would be relevant … to point out the sinister part played by speed, by belief in speed as a value, by, in a word, a kind of impatience that has had a profound effect in changing even the very rhythms of the life of the spirit for the worse.”
Man Against Mass Society(1952) | p. 144