Quotes from book
Nausea

Nausea

Jean Paul SartreOriginal title La Nausée (French, 1938)

Nausea is a philosophical novel by the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, published in 1938. It is Sartre's first novel and, in his own opinion, one of his best works.The novel takes place in 'Bouville' a town similar to Le Havre, and it concerns a dejected historian, who becomes convinced that inanimate objects and situations encroach on his ability to define himself, on his intellectual and spiritual freedom, evoking in the protagonist a sense of nausea.

“I suppose it is out of laziness that the world is the same day after day. Today it seemed to want to change. And then anything, anything could happen.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Source: Nausea

“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.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Source: Nausea

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

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Source: Nausea

“I do not think therefore I am a moustache”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Source: Nausea

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

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Nausea (1938)

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

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Source: Nausea (1938)

“As if there could be true stories: things happen in one way, and we retell them in the opposite way.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Nausea (1938)

“Who can exhaust a man? Who knows a man’s resources?”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Nausea (1938)

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

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Nausea (1938)

“I grasp at each second, trying to suck it dry: nothing happens which I do not seize, which I do not fix forever in myself, nothing, neither the fugitive tenderness of those lovely eyes, nor the noises of the street, nor the false dawn of early morning: and even so the minute passes and I do not hold it back, I like to see it pass.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Nausea (1938)

“As for the square at Meknes, where I used to go every day, it's even simpler: I do not see it at all anymore. All that remains is the vague feeling that it was charming, and these five words that are indivisibly bound together: a charming square at Meknes. … I don't see anything any more: I can search the past in vain, I can only find these scraps of images and I am not sure what they represent, whether they are memories or just fiction.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Diary entry of Friday 3:00pm (9 February?)
Nausea (1938)

“I think they do it to pass the time, nothing more. But time is too large, it can't be filled up. Everything you plunge into it is stretched and disintegrates.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Diary entry of Friday (2 February), concerning a card game
Nausea (1938)

“The past is the luxury of proprietors.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Nausea (1938)

“For the moment, the jazz is playing; there is no melody, just notes, a myriad of tiny tremors. The notes know no rest, an inflexible order gives birth to them then destroys them, without ever leaving them the chance to recuperate and exist for themselves…. I would like to hold them back, but I know that, if I succeeded in stopping one, there would only remain in my hand a corrupt and languishing sound. I must accept their death; I must even want that death: I know of few more bitter or intense impressions.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Nausea (1938)

“My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think … and I can't prevent myself from thinking.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Ma pensée, c'est moi: voilà pourquoi je ne peux pas m'arrêter. J'existe parce que je pense … et je ne peux pas m'empêcher de penser.
Lundi ("Monday")
Nausea (1938)

“And we feel that the hero has lived all the details of this night like annunciations, promises, or even that he lived only those that were promises, blind and deaf to all that did not herald adventure. We forget that the future was not yet there; the man was walking in the night without forethought, a night which offered him a choice of dull rich prizes, and he did not make his choice.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Diary entry of Saturday noon (10 February?)
Nausea (1938)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

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