"It was true, I had always realized it -- I hadn't any 'right' to exist at all. I had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant, a microbe. I could feel nothing to myself but an inconsequential buzzing. I was thinking...that here we are eating and drinking, to preserve our precious existence, and there's nothing, nothing, absolutely no reason for existing."
-- Jean-Paul Sartre, "Nausea"
"If one puts aside the existence of God and the survival after life as too doubtful...one has to make up one's mind as to the use of life. If death ends all, if I have neither to hope for good not to fear evil, I must ask myself what I am here for, and how in these circumstances I must conduct myself.
"Now the answer is plain, but so unpalatable that most will not face it. There is no meaning for life, and [thus] life has no meaning."
-- Somerset Maugham, "The Summing Up"
-- cited by Timothy Keller in "The Reason for God" (Dutton, 2008, p. 127)
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