Quotes from book
The Age of Reason

Name: The Age of Reason
Author: Jean Paul Sartre

Jean Paul SartreOriginal title L'âge de raison (French, 1945)

Not to be confused with “The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology” by Thomas Paine.The Age of Reason is a 1945 novel by Jean-Paul Sartre. It is the first part of the trilogy The Roads to Freedom. The novel, set in the bohemian Paris of the late 1930s, focuses on three days in the life of a philosophy teacher named Mathieu who is seeking money to pay for an abortion for his mistress, Marcelle. Sartre analyses the motives of various characters and their actions and takes into account the perceptions of others to give the reader a comprehensive picture of the main character.

“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.”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Age of Reason

L'âge de raison (The Age of Reason) (1945)

“She smiled and said with an ecstatic air: "It shines like a little diamond",
"What does?"
"This moment. It is round, it hangs in empty space like a little diamond; I am eternal.”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Age of Reason

Source: The Age of Reason

“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.”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Age of Reason

Source: The Age of Reason

“Perhaps its inevitable, perhaps one has to choose between being nothing at all and impersonating what one is.”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Age of Reason

Source: The Age of Reason