Jean-Paul Sartre

“I must be without remorse or regrets as I am without excuse; for from the instant of my upsurge into being, I carry the weight of the world by myself alone without help, engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, whatever I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant.”

“If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I'm still waiting, it's all been to seduce women basically.”

“به جاي تسلط بر جهان بايد بر خويشتن مسلط شد”

“But I must finally realize that I am subject to these sudden transformations. The thing is that I rarely think; a crowd of small metamorphoses accumulate in me without my noticing it, and then, one fine day, a veritable revolution takes place.”

“I have crossed the seas, I have left cities behind me,and I have followed the source of rivers towards theirsource or plunged into forests, always making for othercities. I have had women, I have fought with men ; andI could never turn back any more than a record can spinin reverse. And all that was leading me where ?To this very moment...”

“I am not asking for sensational revelations, but I would like to sense the meaning of that minute, to feel it's urgency...”

“Outside nature, against nature, without excuse, beyond remedy, except what remedy I find within myself.”

“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.”

“A pale reflection of myself wavers in my consciousness...and suddenly the “I” pales, pales, and fades out.”

“A kiss without a moustache, they said then, is like an egg without salt; I will add to it: and it is like Good without Evil.”

“The aim of language...is to communicate...to impart to others the results one has obtained...As I talk, I reveal the situation...I reveal it to myself and to others in order to change it.”

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

“All I want is' - and he uttered the final words through clenched teeth and with a sort of shame - 'to retain my freedom.'I should myself have thought,' said Jacques, 'that freedom consisted in frankly confronting situations into which one had deliberately entered, and accepting all one's responsibilities. But that, no doubt, is not your view.”

“Man is condemned to be free. Condemned because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does.”

“There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours.”

“For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.”

“Tu n'es rien d'autre que ta vie.”

“Life has no meaning, the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.”

“I have no religion, but if I were to choose one, it would be that of Shariati's.”

“Consciousness is a being the nature of which is to be conscious of the nothingness of its being.”

“Night is falling: at dusk, you must have good eyesight to be able to tell the Good Lord from the Devil.”

“Das Leben hat a priori keinen Sinn. Ehe Sie leben, ist das Leben nichts; es liegt bei Ihnen, ihm einen Sinn zu verleihen, und der Wert ist nichts anderes als der Sinn, den Sie wählen.”

“There is a universe behind and before him. And the day is approaching when closing the last book on the last shelf on the far left; he will say to himself, "now what?”

“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.”

“In love, one and one are one.”

“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.”

“There is only one day left, always starting over: It is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.”

“Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.”

“As for me, I am mean: that means that I need the suffering of others to exist. A flame. A flame in their hearts. When I am all alone, I am extinguished.”

“A man is involved in life, leaves his impress on it, and outside of that there is nothing.”

“An individual chooses and makes himself.”

“But the operation of writing implies that of reading as its dialectical correlative and these two connected acts necessitate two distinct agents. It is the joint effort of author and reader, which brings upon the scene that concrete and imaginary object which is the work of the mind. There is no art except for and by others.”

“We are our choices.”

“The consciousness that says 'I am' is not the consciousness that thinks.”

“Once freedom lights its beacon in man's heart, the gods are powerless against him.”

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

“All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.”

“Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.”

“So this is hell. I'd never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the "burning marl." Old wives' tales! There's no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is—other people!”

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

“A real panic took hold of me. I didn't know where I was going. I ran along the docks, turned into the deserted streets in the Beauvoisis district; the houses watched my flight with their mournful eyes. I repeated with anguish: Where shall I go? where shall I go? Anything can happen. Sometimes, my heart pounding, I made a sudden right about turn: what was happening behind my back? Maybe it would start behind me and when I would turn around, suddenly, it would be too late. As long as I could stare at things nothing would happen: I looked at them as much as I could, pavements, houses, gaslights; my eyes went rapidly from one to the other, to catch them unawares, stop them in the midst of their metamorphosis. They didn't look too natural, but I told myself forcibly: this is a gaslight, this is a drinking fountain, and I tried to reduce them to their everyday aspect by the power of my gaze. Several times I came across barriers in my path: the Cafe des Bretons, the Bar de la Marine. I stopped, hesitated in front of their pink net curtains: perhaps these snug places had been spared, perhaps they still held a bit of yesterday's world, isolated, forgotten. But I would have to push the door open and enter. I didn't dare; I went on. Doors of houses frightened me especially. I was afraid they would open of themselves. I ended by walking in the middle of the street.I suddenly came out on the Quai des Bassins du Nord. Fishing smacks and small yachts. I put my foot on a ring set in the stone. Here, far from houses, far from doors, I would have a moment of respite. A cork was floating on the calm, black speckled water."And under the water? You haven't thought what could be under the water."A monster? A giant carapace? sunk in the mud? A dozen pairs of claws or fins labouring slowly in the slime. The monster rises. At the bottom of the water. I went nearer, watching every eddy and undulation. The cork stayed immobile among the black spots.”

“When the rich wage war it's the poor who die.”

“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.”

“Better a good journalist than a poor assassin.”

“Better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees.”

“What if something were to happen? What if something suddenly started throbbing? Then they would notice it was there and they'd think their hearts were going to burst. Then what good would their dykes, bulwarks, power houses, furnaces and pile drivers be to them? It can happen any time, perhaps right now: the omens are present. For example, the father of a family might go out for a walk, and, across the street, he'll see something like a red rag, blown towards him by the wind. And when the rag has gotten close to him he'll see that it is a side of rotten meat, grimy with dust, dragging itself along by crawling, skipping, a piece of writhing flesh rolling in the gutter, spasmodically shooting out spurts of blood. Or a mother might look at her child's cheek and ask him: "What's that, a pimple?" and see the flesh puff out a little, split, open, and at the bottom of the split an eye, a laughing eye might appear. Or they might feel things gently brushing against their bodies, like the caresses of reeds to swimmers in a river. And they will realize that their clothing has become living things. And someone else might feel something scratching in his mouth. He goes to the mirror, opens his mouth: and his tongue is an enormous, live centipede, rubbing its legs together and scraping his palate. He'd like to spit it out, but the centipede is a part of him and he will have to tear it out with his own hands. And a crowd of things will appear for which people will have to find new names, stone eye, great three cornered arm, toe crutch, spider jaw. And someone might be sleeping in his comfortable bed, in his quiet, warm room, and wake up naked on a bluish earth, in a forest of rustling birch trees, rising red and white towards the sky like the smokestacks of Jouxtebouville, with big bumps half way out of the ground, hairy and bulbous like onions. And birds will fly around these birch trees and pick at them with their beaks and make them bleed. Sperm will flow slowly, gently, from these wounds, sperm mixed with blood, warm and glassy with little bubbles.”

“You are -- your life, and nothing else.”

“Life has no meaning a priori… It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.”

“what we might call everyday morality is exclusive of ethical anguish.”

“L'enfer, c'est les autres.”