Jean Paul Sartre: Trending quotes (page 15)

“All-powerful god, who am I but the fear that I inspire in others?”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

King Aegistheus to Jupiter, Act 2
The Flies (1943)

God , Fear

“I was your luxury. For nineteen years I have been put in your man’s world and was forbidden to touch anything and you made me think that all was going very well and that I did not have to worry about anything but putting flowers in vases. Why did you lie to me? Why did you keep me ignorant, if it was to admit to me one day that this world is cracking and that you are all powerless and to make me choose between a suicide and a murder?”

Jean Paul Sartre Dirty Hands

Jessica to Hugo, Act 5, sc. 2
Dirty Hands (1948)

Lie , World , Flowers , Thinking

“…man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards.”

Jean Paul Sartre

Characterizations of Existentialism (1944)

World

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

Jean Paul Sartre

Interview (1960), Quoted in Susan Sontag's introduction to Barthes: Selected Writings, “Writing Itself: On Roland Barthes,” (1982)

Literature

“If you are not already dead, forgive. Rancor is heavy, it is worldly; leave it on earth: die light.”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Devil and the Good Lord

Act 1
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)

Forgiveness , Light , Dead

“The real nature of the present revealed itself: it was what exists, all that was not present did not exist.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Nausea (1938)

Nature

“The consciousness of being betrayed is to the collective consciousness of a sacred group what a certain form of schizophrenia is to the individual…it is a form of madness.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

(193).
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)

Madness

“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.”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Devil and the Good Lord

Act 3, sc. 6
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)

World , Hell , Change

“…the prisoner’s dreams is the guard’s spirituality”

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

(400).
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)

Dreams

“But, if it will help ease your irritated souls, please know, dearly departed, that you have ruined our lives.”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

Aegistheus, Act 2
The Flies (1943)

Soul , Help

“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.”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

Act 1
The Flies (1943)

“When you live alone you no longer know what it is to tell a story: the plausible disappears at the same time as the friends. You let events flow by too: you suddenly see people appear who speak and then go away; you plunge into stories of which you can't make head or tail: you'd make a terrible witness.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Diary entry of Tuesday, 30 January
Nausea (1938)

People , Appearance , Time

“It is the same thing: killing, dying, it is the same thing: one is just as alone in each. He is lucky, he will only die once. As for me, for ten days I have been killing him at every minute.”

Jean Paul Sartre Dirty Hands

Hugo to Jessica, on his plans to kill Hoederer, Act 5, sc. 2
Dirty Hands (1948)

“By turning my head slightly, I could see something out of the corner of my eye: it was a hand, the small white hand which slid along the table a little while ago. Now it was resting on its back, relaxed, soft and sensual, it had the indolent nudity of a woman sunning herself after bathing. A brown hairy object approached it, hesitant. It was a thick finger, yellowed by tobacco; inside this hand it had all the grossness of a male sex organ. It stopped for an instant, rigid, pointing at the fragile palm, then suddenly, it timidly began to stroke it. I was not surprised, I was only furious at the Self-Taught Man (L'Autodidacte); couldn't he hold himself back, the fool, didn't he realize the risk he was running?
The Self-Taught Man did not look surprised. He must have been expecting this for years. He must have imagined what would happen a hundred times, the day the Corsican would slip up behind him and a furious voice would resound suddenly in his ears. Yet he came back every evening, he feverishly pursued his reading and then, from time to time, like a thief, stroked a white hand or perhaps the leg of a small boy. It was resignation that I read on his face.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Nausea (1938)

Fools , Sex , Imagination , Boy

“Genet is a man-failure: he wills the impossible in order to derive from the tragic grandeur of this defeat the assurance that there is something other than the possible.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

(213).
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)

Failure

“In some places the metropolis makes do with paying a clique of feudal overlords; in others, it has fabricated a fake bourgeoisie of colonized subjects in a system of divide and rule; elsewhere, it has killed two birds with one stone: the colony is both settlement and exploitation.”

Jean Paul Sartre

Source: Preface to The Wretched of the Earth (1961), p. xlvi

Bird

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

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Nausea (1938)

Hope , Past

“I, for my part, do not conceive an act as having causes, and I consider myself satisfied when I have found in it not its ‘factors’ but the general themes which it organizes: for our decisions gather into new syntheses and on new occasions the leitmotif that governs our life”

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

P 461
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)

Life , Decision , Parting

“For Genet, Beauty will be the offensive weapon that will enable him to beat the just on their own ground: that of value.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

405
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)

Beauty

“Karsky: I met your father last week. Are you still interested in hearing how he is doing?
Hugo: No.
Karsky: It is very probable that you will be responsible for his death.
Hugo: It is virtually certain that he is responsible for my life. We are even.”

Jean Paul Sartre Dirty Hands

Act 4, sc. 4
Dirty Hands (1948)

Life , Death