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Jean-Paul Sartre quotes

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“People who live in society have learned how to see themselves in mirrors as they appear to their friends.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“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.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“Then time began to flow again and the emptiness grew larger.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“I am alone in the midst of these happy, reasonable voices. All these creatures spend their time explaining, realizing happily that they agree with each other. In Heaven’s name, why is it so important to think the same things all together.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“The true nature of the present revealed itself: it was what exists, and all that was not present did not exist.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“I would be even more alone in death than in life.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“I have crossed seas, left cities behind me, followed the course of rivers or plunged into forests, always making my way towards other cities. I have had women, I have fought with men; and never was I able to turn back, any more than a record can...” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“People. You must love people. Men are admirable. I want to vomit—and suddenly, there it is: the Nausea.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“I must wash myself clean with abstract thoughts, transparent as water.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“Existence is not something which lets itself be thought of from a distance: it must invade you suddenly, master you, weigh heavily on your heart like a great motionless beast—or else there is nothing more at all.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“My thought is me: that’s why I can’t stop. I exist because I think... and I can’t stop myself from thinking. At this very moment—it’s frightful—if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“Real ladies do not know the price of things, they like adorable follies; their eyes are like beautiful, hothouse flowers.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“people think I'm being modest, but it's quite the opposite: I'm thinking that I would do better today and so much better tomorrow.” Jean-Paul Sartre, The Words
“Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“suppose I covered my eyes . . . and refused to look at you, all that loveliness of yours would be wasted on the desert air.” Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit
“I am. I am, I exist, I think, therefore I am; I am because I think, why do I think? I don’t want to think any more, I am because I think that I don’t want to be, I think that I... because... ugh!” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“Eat, sleep, sleep, eat. Exist slowly, softly, like these trees, like a puddle of water, like the red bench in the streetcar.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“I dreamed vaguely of killing myself to wipe out at least one of these superfluous lives. But even my death would have been In the way. In the way, my corpse, my blood on these stones, between these plants, at the back of this smiling garden.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“what is not possible is not to choose. I can always choose, but I must know that if I do not choose, that is still a choice.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism
“a crowd of small metamorphoses accumulate in me without my noticing it, and then, one fine day, a veritable revolution takes place.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“The letters I had just inscribed on it were not even dry yet and already they belonged to the past.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“at last an adventure happens to me and when I question myself I see that it happens that I am myself and that I am here; I am the one who splits the night, I am as happy as the hero of a novel.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“As if there could possibly be true stories; things happen one way and we tell about them in the opposite sense.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“There was some point in being afraid before, while one still had hope.” Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit
“Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“I wanted the moments of my life to follow and order themselves like those of a life remembered. You might as well try and catch time by the tail.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“We can not . . . perceive and imagine simultaneously; it must be either one or the other.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
“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, Nausea
“Life has a meaning if we choose to give it one. One must first act, throw one's self into some enterprise.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“I have no taste for work any longer, I can do nothing more except wait for night.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“For a right is nothing more than the other aspect of duty.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“I am alone in this white, garden-rimmed street. Alone and free. But this freedom is rather like death.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“But the images, forewarned, immediately leaped up and filled my closed eyes with existences: existence is a fullness which man can never abandon.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“I am going to read Eugénie Grandet. It isn't that I get any great pleasure out of it: but I have to do something.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea
“All is full, existence everywhere, dense, heavy and sweet. But, beyond all this sweetness, inaccessible, near and so far, young, merciless and serene, there is this . . . this rigour. ” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

Related topics

existence love freedom time life loneliness action society death ambition imagination suicide present perception beginning mirror weakness happiness heart hope

Related sources

Nausea (30)
Existentialism Is a Humanism (1)
Being and Nothingness (1)
The Words (1)
No Exit (2)