Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes

I had spent my time counterfeiting eternity, I had understood nothing.

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 anymore.

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 admire the way we can lie, putting reason on our side.

I haven’t had any adventures. Things have happened to me, events, incidents, anything you like. But not adventures. It isn’t a matter of words; I am beginning to understand. There is something I longed for more than all the rest - without realizing it properly. It wasn’t love, heaven forbid, nor glory, nor wealth. It was…anyway, I had imagined that at certain moments my life could take on a rare and precious quality. There was no need for extraordinary circumstances: all I asked for was a little order. There is nothing very splendid about my life at present: but now and then, for example when they played music in the cafés, I would l look back and say to myself: in the old days, in London, Meknés, Tokyo, I have known wonderful moments, I have had adventures. It is that which has been taken away from me now. I have just learnt, all of a sudden, for no apparent reason, that I have been lying to myself for ten years. Adventures are in books. And naturally, everything they tell you about in books can happen in real life, but not in the same way. It was to this way of happening that I attached so much importance.

Let it crumble! Let the rocks revile me and flowers wilt at my coming. Your whole universe is not enough to prove me wrong. You are the king of gods, king of stones and stars, king of the waves of the sea. But you are not the king of man.

"But no: he was empty, he was confronted by a vast anger, a desperate anger, he saw it and could almost have touched it. But it was inert - if it were to live and find expression and suffer, he must lend it his own body. It was other people's anger. "Swine!" He clenched his fists, he strode along, but nothing came, the anger remained external to himself."

To exist is simply to he there; those who exist let themselves be encountered, but you can never deduce anything from them.

Then time started flowing again and the emptiness grew larger.

I enjoy feeling fastidious and aloof. I enjoy saying no, always no, and I should be afraid of any attempt to construct a finally habitable world, because I should merely have to say - Yes; and act like other people.

Je suis seul au milieu de ces voix joyeuses et raisonnables. Tous ces types passent leur temps à s’expliquer, à reconnaître avec bonheur qu’ils sont du même avis. Quelle importance ils attachent, mon Dieu, à penser tous ensemble les mêmes choses.

Don’t be afraid; I’ll keep looking at you for ever and ever, without a flutter of my eyelids, and you’ll live in my gaze like a mote in a sunbeam.

We are in hell, my dear, there is never a mistake and people are not damned for nothing.

Time gnaws and wears away; it separates; it flies. And by virtue of separation — by separating man from his pain or from the object of his pain — time cures.

So that is what hell is. I would never have believed it. You remember: the fire and brimstone, the torture. Ah! the farce. There is no need for torture: hell is other people.