Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes

Most of the time, because of their failure to fasten on to words, my thoughts remain misty and nebulous. They assume vague, amusing shapes and are then swallowed up: I promptly forget them.

So I was a poodle of the future; I made prophecies.

Existentialism's first move is to make every man aware of what he is and to make the full responsibility of his existence rest on him.

Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realizes himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.

Finally, it is worth mentioning, in the interest of thoroughness, that the defeat exasperated the conflict between generations. For four years the combatants of 1914 reproached those of 1940 for having lost the war, and those of 1940, in reply, accused their elders of having lost the peace.

Perhaps it’s inevitable; perhaps one has to choose between being nothing at all, or impersonating what one is. That would be terrible,’ he said to himself: ‘it would mean that we were duped by nature.

I'm going to leave, I'm going to take my train. But behind the existence which falls from one present to the other, without a past, without a future, behind these sounds which decompose from day to day, peel off and slip towards death, the melody stays the same, young and firm, like a pitiless witness.

Aramızda bir yakınlık duygusu yok.
Birbirimize benziyoruz sadece.
Benim gibi o da yalnız, ama yalnızlığının içine daha çok batmış.

Man is a useless passion. It is meaningless that we live and it is meaningless that we die.

Perhaps it is impossible to understand one's own face. Or perhaps it is because I am a single man? 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?

je prenais tout au sérieux, comme si j'avais été immortel.

I lean all my weight on the porcelain ledge, I draw my face closer until it touches the mirror. The eyes, nose, and mouth disappear. Nothing is left. Brown wrinkles show on each side of the feverish swelled lips, crevices, mole holes. A silky, white down covers the great slopes of the cheeks, two hairs protrude from the nostrils: it is a geological embossed map. And, in spite of everything, this lunar world is familiar to me. I cannot say I recognize the details. But the whole thing gives me an impression of something seen before which stupefies me: I slip quietly off to sleep.

What then did you expect when you unbound the gag that muted those black mouths? That they would chant your praises? Did you think that when those heads that our fathers had forcibly bowed down to the ground were raised again, you would find adoration in their eyes?

Her eyes stare at me but she seems not to see me; she looks as though she were lost in her suffering.

In the past - even a long while after she left me - I thought of Anny. Now I think of no one any more. I don't even bother looking for words. It flows in me, more or less quickly. I fix nothing, I let it go. 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.