Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes

I had found my religion: nothing seemed more important to me than a book. I saw the library as a temple.

It answers the question that was tormenting you: my love, you are not 'one thing in my life' - not even the most important - because my life no longer belongs to me because...you are always me.

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.

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.

We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are - that is the fact.

Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat.

Man is what he wills himself to be.

I never could bear the idea of anyone's expecting something from me. It
always made me want to do just the opposite.

You and me are real people, operating in a real world. We are not figments of each other’s imagination. I am the architect of my own self, my own character and destiny. It is no use whingeing about what I might have been, I am the things I have done and nothing more. We are all free, completely free. We can each do any damn thing we want. Which is more than most of us dare to imagine.

Every word has consequences. Every silence, too.

L'enfer, c'est les autres.

That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.

In life man commits himself and draws his own portrait, outside of which there is nothing. No doubt this thought may seem harsh to someone who has not made a success of his life. But on the other hand, it helps people to understand that reality alone counts, and that dreams, expectations and hopes only serve to define a man as a broken dream, aborted hopes, and futile expectations.

Existence is an imperfection.

To know what life is worth you have to risk it once in a while.