“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.”

—  Jean Paul Sartre, book Nausea

Source: La náusea

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I felt myself in a solitude so frightful that I contemplated suicide. What held me back was the idea that no one, absol…" by Jean Paul Sartre?
Jean Paul Sartre photo
Jean Paul Sartre321
French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, sc… 1905–1980

Related quotes

“All the time I felt I was being watched, that I was not alone, that I was putting on an act for the benefit of someone, that this action could be done only if it was spontaneous, pure – and moral. Because more and more it crept through my mind with the chill spring night that I was trying to commit not a moral action, but a fundamentally aesthetic one; to do something that would end my life sensationally, significantly, consistently. It was a Mercutio death I was looking for, not a real one. A death to be remembered, not the true death of a true suicide, the death obliterate.”

John Fowles book Daniel Martin

Daniel Martin (1977)

Gottfried von Straßburg photo

“I have no idea what the other will be like, but this death suits me well! If my adorable Isolde were to go on being the death of me in this fashion I would woo death everlasting!”

Gottfried von Straßburg book Tristan

Ine weiz, wie jener werden sol;
dirre tôt der tuot mir wol.
solte diu wunneclîche Isôt
iemer alsus sî mîn tôt,
sô wolte ich gerne werben
umbe ein êweclîchez sterben.
Source: Tristan, Line 12497

Gautama Buddha photo

“I spit on my life.
Death in battle would be better for me
than that I, defeated, survive.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

This statement is made in reference to his battle against the personification of temptation to evil, Mara.
Source: Pali Canon, Sutta Pitaka, Khuddaka Nikaya (Minor Collection), (Suttas falling down), Sutta 3.2. Padhana Sutta

Louis-ferdinand Céline photo

“I crawled back into myself all alone, just delighted to observe that I was even more miserable than before, because I had brought a new kind of distress and something that resembled true feeling into my solitude.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night

Franz Kafka photo

“The fact that no one knows where I am is my only happiness. If only I could prolong this forever! It would be far more just than death. I am empty and futile in every corner of my being, even in my unhappiness.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Felice

Source: Letters to Felice‎

Ned Kelly photo

“More men than I have put men to death, but I am the last man in the world that would take a man's life. Two years ago—even if my own life was at stake—and I am confident, if I thought a man would shoot me—I would give him a chance of keeping his life, and would part with my own; but if I knew that through him innocent persons' lives were at stake, I certainly would have to shoot him if he forced me to do so; but I would want to know that he was really going to take my innocent life.”

Ned Kelly (1855–1880) Australian bushranger

Sentencing (1880)

Jean Paul Sartre photo

“God is the solitude of men. There was only me: I alone decided to commit Evil; alone, I invented Good. I am the one who cheated, I am the one who performed miracles, I am the one accusing myself today, I alone can absolve myself; me, the man.”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Devil and the Good Lord

Act 10, sc. 4
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)

Witold Pilecki photo

“I've been trying to live my life so that in the hour of my death I would rather feel joy, than fear.”

Witold Pilecki (1901–1948) World War II concentration camp leader and resistor

After the announcement of the death sentence.
Source: Bartłomiej Kuraś, Witold Pilecki – w Auschwitzu z własnej woli, „Ale Historia”, w: „Gazeta Wyborcza”, 22 kwietnia 2013.

Jean Meslier photo

“How I suffered when I had to preach to you those pious lies that I detest in my heart. What remorse your credulity caused me! A thousand times I was on the point of breaking out publicly and opening your eyes, but a fear stronger than myself held me back, and forced me to keep silence until my death.”

Jean Meslier (1664–1729) French priest

Quoted in Thinker: Jean Meslier by Colin Brewer, in rationalist.org (3 July 2007) http://rationalist.org.uk/articles/1425/thinker-jean-meslier <br class="br">Testament: Memoir of the Thoughts and Sentiments of Jean Meslier

Antonin Artaud photo

“If I commit suicide, it will not be to destroy myself but to put myself back together again. Suicide will be for me only one means of violently reconquering myself, of brutally invading my being, of anticipating the unpredictable approaches of God. By suicide, I reintroduce my design in nature, I shall for the first time give things the shape of my will.”

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director

Si je me tue ce ne sera pas pour me détruire, mais pour me reconstituer, le suicide ne sera pour moi qu’un moyen de me reconquérir violemment, de faire brutalement irruption dans mon être, de devancer l’avance incertaine de Dieu. Par le suicide, je réintroduis mon dessin dans la nature, je donne pour la première fois aux choses la forme de ma volonté.
“On Suicide,” no. 1, Le Disque Vert (1925).

Related topics