100+ Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes | InspiringQuotes.us

source: - Martin Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre (2016). “The Philosophical Library Existentialism Collection: Essays in Metaphysics, The Ethics of Ambiguity, and The Philosophy of Existentialism”, p.167, Open Road Media

Topics: Freedom, Responsibility, Men, Condemning, Responsibility For Your Life

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

source: - Jean-Paul Sartre (2012). “Essays in Aesthetics”, p.11, Open Road Media

Topics: Inspirational, Attitude, Freedom

He walked on in silence, the solitary sound of his footsteps echoing in his head, as in a deserted street, at dawn. His solitude was so complete, beneath a lovely sky as mellow and serene as a good conscience, amid that busy throng, that he was amazed at his own existence; he must be somebody else's nightmare, and whoever it was would certainly awaken soon.

Topics: Sky, Silence, Solitude, Footsteps

We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.

Topics: Inspirational, Learning, Finding Yourself, Self Realization, Discovering Self

Don't you feel the same way? When I cannot see myself, even though I touch myself, I wonder if I really exist.

Topics: Way, Existentialism, Wonder

I have no religion, but if I were to choose one, it would be that of Shariati's.

Topics: Would Be

It is therefore senseless to think of complaining since nothing foreign has decided what we feel, what we live, or what we are.

Topics: Philosophy, Thinking, Complaining

Acting is happy agony.

Topics: Agony, Acting

I have such a desire to sleep and am so much behind my sleep. A good night, one good night and all this nonsense will be swept away.

Topics: Good Night, Sleep, Desire, Swept Away

Life begins on the other side of despair.

Topics: Inspirational, Life, Philosophical

The more one is absorbed in fighting evil, the less one is tempted to place the good in question.

Topics: Fighting, Evil, Tempted, Fighting Evil

Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.

Topics: Witty, Time, Book, No Exit

Words are loaded pistols.

Topics: Thought Provoking, Pistols, Existentialism, Loaded

Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat.

source: - Jean-Paul Sartre (2012). “Essays in Aesthetics”, p.12, Open Road Media

Topics: Rocks, Guy, Rowing, Rocking The Boat, Disturbing

If literature isn't everything, it's not worth a single hour of someone's trouble.

Topics: Philosophical, Literature, Trouble

People who live in society have learnt how to see themselves, in mirrors, as they appear to their friends. I have no friends: is that why my flesh is so naked?

Topics: Mirrors, People, No Friends, I Have No Friends

That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.

Topics: Philosophical, Doe, Cry

I am going to outlive myself. Eat, sleep, sleep, eat. Exist slowly, softly, like these trees, like a puddle of water, like the red bench in the streetcar.

Topics: Sleep, Water, Tree

Man is what he wills himself to be.

Topics: Men, No Exit

I can receive nothing more from these tragic solitudes than a little empty purity.

Topics: Solitude, Littles, Purity

Every word has consequences. Every silence, too.

Topics: Silence, Consequence

God is absence. God is the solitude of man.

Topics: Men, Solitude, Absence

There were days when you peered into yourself, into the secret places of your heart, and what you saw there made you faint with horror. And then, next day, you didn't know what to make of it,you couldn't interpret the horror you had glimpsed the day before. Yes, you know what evil costs.

Topics: Fear, Heart, Evil, Secret Places

It's quite an undertaking to start loving somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment right at the start where you have to jump across an abyss: if you think about it you don't do it.

Topics: Life, Thinking, Generosity

Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.

Topics: Philosophical, Men, Choices

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

Topics: Philosophical, Judging, Evil

I have no need for good souls: an accomplice is what I wanted.

Topics: Philosophical, Soul, Needs, Good Souls, Accomplices

As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.

Topics: Philosophical, Men, Interest

I'd come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clear-cut language.

Topics: Spring, Cutting, Use

Ha! to forget. How childish! I feel you in my bones. Your silence screams in my ears. You may nail your mouth shut, you may cut out your tongue, can you keep yourself from existing? Will you stop your thoughts.

Topics: Cutting, Silence, May

Our responsibility is much greater than we might have supposed, because it involves all mankind.

Topics: Responsibility, Might, Existentialism

Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.

Topics: Responsibility, Destiny, Men

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.

Topics: Dream, Art, Truth, Disenchantment, Bitter Truth

Once freedom lights its beacon in man's heart, the gods are powerless against him.

Topics: Heart, Men, Light

I will not be modest. Humble, as much as you like, but not modest. Modesty is the virtue of the lukewarm.

Topics: Humble, Modesty, Virtue

To read a poem in January is as lovely as to go for a walk in June

Topics: Summer, June, Lovely

For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.

Topics: Travel, Adventure, Funny Travel

I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating.

Topics: Existentialism, Existence

Anything, anything would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses one and never hurts quite enough.

Topics: Hurt, Pain, Agony, No Exit

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one's death, one dies one's life.

Topics: Death, Existentialism, Stills, Existence Of Life

Hell is other people at breakfast.

Topics: Food, People, Breakfast

Neither sex, without some fertilization of the complimentary characters of the other, is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavor.

Topics: Sex, Character, Endeavor, Fertilization

If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I'm still waiting, it's all been to seduce women basically.

Topics: Waiting, Seduction, Philosopher

The poor don't know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.

Topics: Life, Exercise, Generosity, Your Generosity

I hate victims who respect their executioners.

Topics: Fake People, Hate, Judging

You take souls for vegetables.... The gardener can decide what will become of his carrots but no one can choose the good of others for them.

Topics: Vegetables, Soul, Carrots

There are two types of poor people, those who are poor together and those who are poor alone. The first are the true poor, the others are rich people out of luck.

Topics: Two, People, Luck, Rich People

When rich people fight wars with one another, poor people are the ones to die.

Topics: War, Philosophical, Fighting, Rich People

The best work is not what is most difficult for you; it is what you do best.

Topics: Inspirational, Summer, Difficult

We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are - that is the fact.

Topics: Philosophical, Want, Facts

I think that is the big danger in keeping a diary: you exaggerate everything.

Topics: Thinking, Diaries, Danger

Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.

Topics: Military, Philosophical, Numbers, Existentialist

A kiss without a moustache, they said then, is like an egg without salt; I will add to it: and it is like Good without Evil.

Topics: Kissing, Eggs, Evil, Moustache

your judgement judges you and defines you

Topics: Judging, Judgement, Define You

A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost.

Topics: Thinking, Battle, Lost

Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.

In love, one and one are one.

Topics: Love, Inspirational, True Love, Great True Love

Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.

Topics: Graduation, Freedom, Responsibility

You must be like me; you must suffer in rhythm.

Topics: Suffering, Rhythm

Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.

Topics: Birthday, Creating, Race

It is not the same thing if I sign Jean-Paul Sartre or if I sign Jean-Paul Sartre, Nobel Prize winner. A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution, even if it takes place in the most honorable form.

Topics: Honesty, Integrity, Character, Paul Sartre, Nobel Prize Winners

Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think.

Topics: Powerful, Philosophical, Thinking, Treacherous

Poetry creates the myth, the prose writer draws its portrait.

Topics: Writing, Portraits, Myth

If you die, I will lie down beside you and I will stay there until the end, without eating or drinking, you will rot in my arms and I will love you as carcass: for you love nothing if you do not love everything.

Topics: Life, Lying, Drinking, Beside You

You are -- your life, and nothing else.

source: - Jean Paul Sartre (1955). “No exit, and three other plays”, Vintage

Topics: No Exit

Better a good journalist than a poor assassin.

Topics: Assassins, Poor, Journalist, Good Journalism

I tell you in truth: all men are Prophets or else God does not exist.

Topics: Men, Doe, Prophet

Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away. To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives.

Topics: Generosity, Giving, Facts, Craze

What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be.

Topics: Mean, Men, Essence, Indefinable, Existentialist

No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.

Topics: Infinite, Finite

Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.

Topics: Deep Thought, Victory, Details

Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.

Topics: Philosophical, Meaning Of Life

I never could bear the idea of anyone's expecting something from me. It always made me want to do just the opposite.

Topics: Opposites, Ideas, Want, Expecting Something, No Exit

The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.

Topics: Men, Existentialist, Anguish

It is only in our decisions that we are important.

Topics: Decision, Important

On my way to the office in the morning, there are, in front of me, behind me, other men going to their jobs. I see them; if I dared, I would smile at them. I think to myself that I am a socialist, that they are the purpose of my life, of my efforts and that they do not know it yet.

Topics: Morning, Jobs, Men

It is no longer possible to escape men. Farewell to the monsters, farewell to the saints. Farewell to pride. All that is left is men.

Topics: Farewell, Pride, Men

I committed the first crime by creating men as mortals. After that, what more could you do, you the murderers? Come on; they already had death in them: at most you simply hastened things a little.

Topics: Men, Creating, Guilt

To whomever gives a kiss or a blow Render a kiss or blow But to whomever gives when you are unable to return Offer all the hatred in your heart For you were slaves and he enslaves you

Topics: Heart, Kissing, Blow

I do not understand! I understand nothing! I cannot understand nor do I want to understand! I want to believe! To Believe!

Topics: Believe, Want, Belief

But [your crime] will be there, one hundred times denied, always there, dragging itself behind you. Then you will finally know that you have committed your life with one throw of the die, once and for all, and there is nothing you can do but tug our crime along until your death. Such is the law, just and unjust, of repentance. Then we will see what will become of your young pride.

Topics: Pride, Law, Punishment

How can I, who was not able to retain my own past, hope to save that of another?

Topics: Past, Able, Alienation

Before you come alive, life is nothing; it 's up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing else but the meaning that you choose.

source: - "Existentialism and Human Emotions".

Topics: Giving, Up To You, Life Has No Meaning, Humanism

What is life but an unpleasant interruption to a peaceful nonexistence.

Topics: Peaceful, What Is Life, Interruptions

I can always choose, but I ought to know that if I do not choose, I am still choosing.

source: - Jean-Paul Sartre (2012). “The Philosophy of Existentialism: Selected Essays”, p.32, Open Road Media

Topics: Stills, Ought, Knows

the worst part about being lied to is knowing you werent worth the truth

Topics: Knowing, Being Lied, Lied

We make our own hell out of the people around us.

Topics: People, Hell

He who asks a question is a fool for a minute; he who does not remains a fool forever. When you realize that by changing your perspective, big things can be seen as little things, it becomes much harder to worry about anything. Commitment is an act, not a word.

Topics: Commitment, Perspective, Worry

In a word, man must create his own essence: it is in throwing himself into the world, suffering there, struggling there, that he gradually defines himself.

source: - Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Rybalka, Michel Contat, Richard C. McCleary (1985). “The Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre”, p.157, Northwestern University Press

Topics: Struggle, Men, Essence, World Suffering

Sometimes the truth is too simple for intellectuals.

Topics: Simple, Sometimes, Truth Is

To know what life is worth you have to risk it once in a while.

source: - Jean Paul Sartre (1955). “No exit, and three other plays”, Vintage

Topics: Inspirational, Risk, Life Is, Risk It

Death is a continuation of my life without me.

source: - Jean-Paul Sartre (2012). “Essays in Aesthetics”, p.14, Open Road Media

Topics: Death, Existentialism, Continuation

There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.

source: - Jean-Paul Sartre (2012). “Essays in Aesthetics”, p.12, Open Road Media

Topics: Philosophical, Taken, Sunset, Carpe, Dawn And Dusk

We are possessed by the things we possess. When I like an object, I always give it to someone. It isn't generosity-it's only because I want others to be enslaved by objects, not me.

Topics: Generosity, Giving, Want

Because we can imagine, we are free.

Topics: Imagine

What is boredom? It is when there is simultaneously too much and not enough.

Topics: Boredom, Too Much, Enough

The individual's duty is to do what he wants to do, to think whatever he likes, to be accountable to no one but himself, to challenge every idea and every person.

Topics: Thinking, Ideas, Challenges

In wanting freedom we discover that it depends entirely on the freedom of others, and that the freedom of others depends on ours. . . I am obliged to want others to have freedom at the same time that I want my own freedom. I can take freedom as my goal only if I take that of others as a goal as well.

Topics: Goal, Want, Wells

If you want to deserve Hell, you need only stay in bed. The world is iniquity; if you accept it, you are an accomplice, if you change it you are an executioner.

source: - "The Devil and the Good Lord". Play by Jean-Paul Sartre, Act 3, sc. 6, 1951.

Topics: World, Want, Bed, Iniquity, Accomplices

Existence is an imperfection.

source: - Jean-Paul Sartre (2013). “Nausea”, p.93, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Imperfection, Existence

Once we know and are aware, we are responsible for our action and our inaction. We can do something about it or ignore it. Either way, we are still responsible.

Topics: Our Actions, Way, Responsible, Can Do Something

Il n'y a de réalité que dans l'action. (There is no reality except in action.)

Topics: Reality, Action, Existentialism

To choose not to choose is still to act.

Topics: Stills

Nothingness haunts Being.

source: - Jean-Paul Sartre (1968). “Essays in Existentialism”

Topics: Existentialism, Nothingness

I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men.

source: - "Nausea". Book by Jean-Paul Sartre, 1938.

Topics: Believe, Men, Existence, Concentration Camp

The consciousness that says 'I am' is not the consciousness that thinks.

Topics: Thinking, Consciousness

I respect orders but I respect myself too and I do not obey foolish rules made especially to humiliate me.

source: - "Dirty Hands". Book by Jean-Paul Sartre, Hugo to Slick and Georges, Act 3, sc. 2, 1948.

Topics: Order, Foolish, Made, I Respect Myself, Humiliate

Introspection is always retrospection

Topics: Human Nature, Introspection

Two people can form a community by excluding a third.

Topics: Two, People, Community

What is not possible is not to choose.

Violence is good for those who have nothing to lose.

source: - Jean-Paul Sartre (2012). “Essays in Aesthetics”, p.12, Open Road Media

Topics: Violence, Nothing To Lose, Loses

It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.

source: - "The Strange Fiction of Devon Pitlor: Volume III". Book by Devon Pitlor, p. 241, May 27, 2014.

Topics: Selfish, Men, Apes, Mischievous, Vulture

In life man commits himself and draws his own portrait, outside of which there is nothing. No doubt this thought may seem harsh to someone who has not made a success of his life. But on the other hand, it helps people to understand that reality alone counts, and that dreams, expectations and hopes only serve to define a man as a broken dream, aborted hopes, and futile expectations.

Topics: Dream, Reality, Men, Broken Dreams

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

source: - Jean-Paul Sartre, Lloyd Alexander (1964). “Nausea”, p.133, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Life, Philosophy, Philosophical

Several hours or several years make no difference once you have lost eternity.

Topics: Years, Differences, Hours

Ideas come in pairs and they contradict one another; their opposition is the principal engine of reflection.

source: - Jean Paul Sartre (1961). “Sartre on Cuba”

Topics: Reflection, Ideas, Pairs

There are two ways of destroying a people. Either condemn them en bloc or force them to repudiate the leaders they adopted. The second is the worse.

source: - Jean-Paul Sartre (1960). “Loser wins: (Les séquestrés d'Altona : a play in five acts”

Topics: Two, People, Leader

If you seek authenticity for authenticity's sake you are no longer authentic.

source: - Jean-Paul Sartre (1992). “Notebooks for an Ethics”, p.4, University of Chicago Press

Topics: Sake, Authenticity, Ifs

Life is a useless passion.

Topics: Passion, Useless, Life Is

I found the human heart empty and insipid everywhere except in books.

Topics: Book, Heart, Empty

Everything comes to us from others. To Be is to belong to someone.

source: - Jean-Paul Sartre (2012). “Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr”, p.6, U of Minnesota Press

Topics: Love, True Love, Funny Marriage

Life gave me everything I asked If all I asked was not a great deal, that's my problem!

Topics: Problem, Deals, Ifs

God is dead. Let us not understand by this that he does not exist or even that he no longer exists. He is dead. He spoke to us and is silent. We no longer have anything but his cadaver. Perhaps he slipped out of the world, somewhere else like the soul of a dead man. Perhaps he was only a dream...God is dead.

Topics: Dream, Men, Somewhere Else, God Is Dead, Cadavers

One does not adopt a new idea, one slips into it.

Topics: Ideas, Doe, New Ideas

One cannot become a saint when one works sixteen hours a day.

source: - "The Devil and the Good Lord". Play by Jean-Paul Sartre, Act 5, sc. 2, 1951.

Topics: Philosophical, Saint, Sixteen

It’s the well-behaved children that make the most formidable revolutionaries. They don’t say a word, they don’t hide under the table, they eat only one piece of chocolate at a time. But later on, they make society pay dearly.

source: - Jean Paul Sartre (1949). “Three Plays: Tr. from the French by Lionel Abel”

Topics: Children, Chocolate, Pieces

Genius is what a man invents when he is looking for a way out.

source: - Jean-Paul Sartre, Lloyd Alexander (1964). “Nausea”, p.14, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Men, Genius, Way

To think new thoughts you have to break the bones in your head

Topics: Thinking, Bones, Break

He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.

source: - "The Age of Reason". Book by Jean-Paul Sartre, 1945.

Topics: Giving Up, Years, Games

One should commit no stupidity twice, the variety of choice is, in the end, large enough.

Topics: Choices, Stupidity, Enough

All I can do is make the best of what I am, become accustomed to it, evaluate the possibilities, and take advantage of them the best I can.

source: - Jean-Paul Sartre (1978). “Sartre in the Seventies: Interviews and Essays”

Topics: Possibility, Advantage, Accustomed, Evaluate

You must be afraid, my son. That is how one becomes an honest citizen.

source: - Jean-Paul Sartre (2012). “Essays in Aesthetics”, p.14, Open Road Media

Topics: Son, House, Citizens

Why do you keep maintaining your ideas are right if you can't prove them?

source: - Jean Paul Sartre (1955). “No exit, and three other plays”, Vintage

Topics: Ideas, Maintaining, Prove

An individual chooses and makes himself.

Topics: Individual

What the painter adds to the canvas are the days of his life. The adventure of living, hurtling toward death.

Topics: Adventure, Add, Canvas

It is disgusting -- Why must we have bodies?

source: - Jean-Paul Sartre (1969). “The Wall (Intimacy) and Other Stories”, p.60, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Body, Disgusting

Imagination is not an empirical or superadded power of consciousness, it is the whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom.

Topics: Imagination, Realizing, Consciousness

One of the chief motives of artistic creation is certainly the need of feeling that we are essential in relationship to the world.

source: - Jean-Paul Sartre (2012). “Literature & Existentialism”, p.21, Open Road Media

Topics: Motivation, Feelings, Essentials, Artistic Creation

Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.

Topics: Men, Doe

Philosophy which does not help to illuminate the process of the liberation of the oppressed should be rejected.

Topics: Philosophy, Doe, Helping

Because the Nazi venom worked its way even into our thoughts, every accurate thought was a conquest; because an all-powerful police sought to force us into silence every word became as precious as a declaration of principle; because we were persecuted, each of our gestures carried the weight of a commitment.

Topics: Powerful, Commitment, Silence, Venom, Persecuted

Naturally, in the course of my life I have made lots of mistakes, large and small, for one reason or another, but at the heart of it all, every time I made a mistake it was because I was not radical enough.

source: - Jean-Paul Sartre (1978). “Sartre in the Seventies: Interviews and Essays”

Topics: Mistake, Heart, Reason

Smooth and smiling faces everywhere, but ruin in their eyes.

Topics: Eye, Ruins, Faces, Smiling Faces

It is enough that one man hate another for hate to gain, little by little, all mankind.

Topics: Hate, Men, Hatred

To believe is to know you believe, and to know you believe is not to believe.

source: - "The Wretched of the Earth". Book by Frantz Fanon, 1961.

Topics: Spiritual, Atheist, Believe

When the rich [and politically powerful] make war, it's the poor [and politically weak] who die.

Topics: Powerful, War, Rich

Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that's all. There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable, monotonous addition.

source: - Jean-Paul Sartre (2013). “Nausea”, p.45, New Directions Publishing

Topics: People, Nausea, Reason

He loves me, he doesn't love my bowels, if they showed him my appendix in a glass he wouldn't recognize it, he's always feeling me, but if they put the glass in his hands he wouldn't touch it, he wouldn't think, "that's hers," you ought to love all of somebody, the esophagus, the liver, the intestines. Maybe we don't love them because we aren't used to them, but if we saw them the way we saw our hands and arms maybe we'd love them; the starfish must love each other better than we do.

source: - Jean-Paul Sartre (2010). “The Wall: (Intimacy) and Other Stories”, p.56, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Thinking, Glasses, Hands, Bowels, Starfish

It is meaningless that we are born, it is meaningless that we die.

Topics: Born, Dies, Meaningless

Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience.

Topics: People, Personality, Acting, Acting From Actors, Actors And Acting

The more absurd life is, the more insupportable death is.

Topics: Life Is, Absurd

When we love animals and children too much, we love them at the expense of men.

Topics: Love, Children, Animal

Intellectuals cannot be good revolutionaries; they are just good enough to be assassins.

source: - "Dirty Hands". Play by Jean-Paul Sartre, Act 5, sc. 3, 1948.

Topics: Assassins, Revolutionary, Enough

I confused things with their names: that is belief.

source: - Les Mots (The Words, 1964) "crire"

Topics: Confused, Names, Belief

There are two kinds of existentialist; first, those who are Christian...and on the other hand the atheistic existentialists, among whom...I class myself. What they have in common is that they think that existence precedes essence, or, if you prefer, that subjectivity must be the turning point.

Topics: Christian, Atheist, Thinking, Existentialist

When she is alone in the rooms I hear her humming to keep herself from thinking.

source: - Jean-Paul Sartre (2013). “Nausea”, p.23, New Directions Publishing

Topics: Thinking, Rooms, Chaos

Be quiet! Anyone can spit in my face, and call me a criminal and a prostitute. But no one has the right to judge my remorse.

source: - "The Flies". Book by Jean-Paul Sartre, act 1, 1943.

Topics: Judging, Criminals, Faces

With despair, true optimism begins: the optimism of the man who expects nothing, who knows he has no rights and nothing coming to him, who rejoices in counting on himself alone and in acting alone for the good of all.

source: - Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Rybalka, Michel Contat, Richard C. McCleary (1985). “The Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre”, p.159, Northwestern University Press

Topics: Men, Rights, Optimism

That’s what existence means: draining one’s own self dry without the sense of thirst.

Topics: Mean, Self, Dry, Draining

I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.

source: - "The Devil and the Good Lord". Book by Jean-Paul Sartre, act 10, sc. 2, 1951.

Topics: Soul, Desire, Existentialism

It is certain that we cannot escape anguish, for we are anguish.

source: - "Being and Nothingness". Book by Jean-Paul Sartre, 1943.

Topics: Existentialism, Certain, Anguish

A man is always a teller of tales, he lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his life as if he were recounting it.

source: - Jean Paul Sartre (1949). “The diary of Antoine Roquentin”

Topics: Art, Philosophy, Men