Plato began his philosophic career as the result of a conversion. This is surely an existential beginning. - William Barrett

Now at the end, we come back to the beginning: to the situation of the world here and now, from which all understanding must start and to which it must return. In all existential thinking it is we ourselves, the questioners, who are ultimately in question.

The decline of religion in modern times means simply that religion is no longer the uncontested center and ruler of man's life, and that the Church is no longer the final and unquestioned home and asylum of his being.

Poets are witnesses to Being before the philosophers are able to bring it into thought.