5 Quotes & Sayings By Peter Wessel Zapffe

Peter Wessel Zapffe was born in Bergen, Norway, in 1885. He studied in Oslo, Stockholm, Berlin and Copenhagen, before embarking on a career as a journalist in Argentina. He became interested in philosophy while writing for the newspaper Verdens Gang. In 1923 he moved to Mexico where he worked as a correspondent for Verdens Gang Read more

After falling out with the editor he returned to Norway, where he completed his first book, The Last Days of Mankind. It was published in 1925. Zapffe's interest in the work of Kierkegaard was an important influence on his thinking.

He published several more books on existentialism, including World's End (1928), The Existential Moment (1931), and Time Will Pass Away (1933). The latter book argued that traditional forms of political organization were doomed and that only "the powerless" could remain free. Zapffe returned to Mexico, where he remained until his death in 1957.

1
To bear children into this world is like carrying wood to a burning house. Peter Wessel Zapffe
2
— The life of the worlds is a roaring river, but Earth’s is a pond and a backwater.— The sign of doom is written on your brows — how long will ye kick against the pin-pricks?— But there is one conquest and one crown, one redemption and one solution.— Know yourselves — be infertile and let the earth be silent after ye. Peter Wessel Zapffe
3
Another flaw of the system is the fact that various danger fronts often require very different firmaments. As a logical superstructure is built upon each, there follow clashes of incommensurable modes of feeling and thought. Then despair can enter through the rifts. In such cases, a person may be obsessed with destructive joy, dislodging the whole artificial apparatus of his life and starting with rapturous horror to make a clean sweep of it. The horror stems from the loss of all sheltering values, the rapture from his by now ruthless identification and harmony with our nature’s deepest secret, the biological unsoundness, the enduring disposition for doom. Peter Wessel Zapffe
4
Know yourselves- be infertile and let the earth be silent after ye. Peter Wessel Zapffe