Jean Paul Sartre: Trending quotes (page 4)

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

“Through the lack of attaching myself to words, my thoughts remain nebulous most of the time. They sketch vague, pleasant shapes and then are swallowed up; I forget them almost immediately.”

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

“I felt myself in a solitude so frightful that I contemplated suicide. What held me back was the idea that no one, absolutely no one, would be moved by my death, that I would be even more alone in death than in life.”

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

“I had found my religion: nothing seemed more important to me than a book. I saw the library as a temple.”

“Existence is an imperfection.”

“People who live in society have learned how to see themselves in mirrors as they appear to their friends. I have no friends. Is that why my flesh is so naked?”

“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.”

“Do you think that I count the days? There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.”

“Better a good journalist than a poor assassin.”

“Man is condemned to be free. Condemned because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does.”

“One always dies too soon — or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.”

“As for me, I am mean: that means that I need the suffering of others to exist. A flame. A flame in their hearts. When I am all alone, I am extinguished.”

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

“You know, it's quite a job starting to love somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment, in the very beginning, when you have to jump across a precipice: if you think about it you don't do it.”

“I exist. It is soft, so soft, so slow. And light: it seems as though it suspends in the air. It moves.”

“Little flashes of sun on the surface of a cold, dark sea.”

“Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being - like a worm.”