The dilemma created by the existentialist “leap” is inescapable. Every — Existentialism

"Existentialism does not offer to the reader the consolations of an abstract evasion: existentialism proposes no evasion. On the contrary, its ethics is experienced in the truth of life, and it then appears as the only proposition of salvation which one can address to men."

"A great deal has been written about Existentialism in recent years, but this work of Dr. Kingston’s seems to me to occupy a unique and important place, and this for two reasons. First, in my opinion he seems to raise those questions about the Existentialist movement which most immediately spring to the mind of any intelligent Christian who finds himself confronted with it. Is the movement a reaction against Christian orthodoxy as such, or is it an attempt to recover certain Christian insights which Christians themselves have largely forgotten? If it is the former, how are we to explain the Christian existentialists, such as Kierkegaard and Marcel? If it is the latter, how are we to explain the atheist and antitheist existentialists, such as Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir? Is it possible, in view of their radical opposition to consider Christian and atheist existentialism of the same genus? Or is it only by a misleading and equivocal use of words that the same label-“existentialism"-has been made to apply to both? And, granted that there can be a Christian existentialism, is it essentially Protestant or is there a genuinely Catholic type which can appeal to authentic, if perhaps partly forgotten, principles of traditional, and even Thomist, theology and philosophy?"

"Nor if God does not exist are we provided with any values or commands that could legitimize our behavior. Thus we have neither behind us , nor before us in a luminous realm of values, any means of justification or excuse. We are left alone without excuse. That is I mean to say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment that he is thrown into the world he is responsible for everything else he does."

"If Nietzsche is the father of existentialism, then perhaps Darwin deserves the title of grandfather."

"This characteristic of Dasein’s being—this “that it is”—is veiled in its “whence” and “whither.”"

"I am well aware that as a human being I am very far from being a paradigm; if anything, I am a sample human being. With a fair degree of accuracy, I give the temperature of every mood and passion, and when I am generating my own inwardness, I understand these words: homo sum, nil humani a me alienum puto [I am a human being, I hold that nothing human is alien to me]. But humanly no one can model himself on me, and historically I am even less a prototype for any human being. If anything, I am someone who could be needed in a crisis, as a guinea pig that life uses to feel its way. A person half as reflective as I would be able to be of significance for many people, but precisely because I am altogether reflective I have none at all. As soon as I am outside my religious understanding, I feel as an insect with which children are playing must feel, because life seems to have dealt with me so unmercifully; as soon as I am inside my religious understanding, I understand that precisely this has absolute meaning for me. Hence, that which in one case is a dreadful jest is in another sense the most profound earnestness. Earnestness is basically not something simple, a simplex, but is a compositum [compound], for true earnestness is the unity of jest and earnestness."