Quotes by Jean-Paul Sartre

Whats done at night belongs to the night. In the daytime you dont talk about it.

emotion is first of all and in principle an accident

My thought is me: thats why I cant stop. I exist because I think...and I cant stop myself from thinking. At this very moment, its frightful, if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing. I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire: the hatred, the disgust of existing, there are as many ways to make myself exist, to thrust myself into existence. Thoughts are born at the back of me, like sudden giddiness, I feel them being born behind my head...if I yield, theyre going to come round in front of me, between my eyes, and I always yield, the thought grows and grows and there it is, immense, filling me completely and renewing my existence.

Concha would cry when she found out I was dead, she should have no taste for life for months afterward. But I was still the one who was going to die. I thought of her soft, beautiful eyes. when she looked at me something passed her to me. But I knew it was over: if she looked at me now the look would stay in her eyes, it wouldnt reach me. I was alone

Perhaps it was a passing moment of madness after all. There is no trace of it any more. My odd feelings of the other week seem to me quite ridiculous today: I can no longer enter into them.

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?

So you realized that there were always women in tears, or a red-headed man, or something else to spoil your effects?Yes, naturally.

The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

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.

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...

What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be.

Nothingness haunts Being.

There is no human nature, since there is no god to conceive it.

A little more and I would have fallen into the mirror trap. I avoided it, but only to fall into the window trap: with nothing to do, my arms dangling, I go over to the window.

Let us see what words can do. Will you understand me, for a start, if I tell you that I have never known what I am? My vices, my virtues, are under my nose, but I can’t see them, nor stand far enough back to view myself as a whole. I seem to be a sort of flabby mass in which words are engulfed; no sooner do I name myself than what is named is merged in him who names, and one gets no farther. I have often wanted to hate myself and, as you know, had good reasons for so doing. But my attempted hatred of myself was absorbed into my insubstantiality and was nothing but a recollection. I could not love myself either, I am sure, though I have never tried to. But I was eternally compelled to be myself; I was my own burden, but never burdensome enough, Mathieu. For one instant, on that June evening when I elected to confess to you, I thought I had encountered myself in your bewildered eyes.You saw me, in your eyes I was solid and predictable; my acts and moods were the actual consequences of a definite entity. And through me you knew that entity. I described it to you in my words, I revealed to you facts unknown to you, which had helped you to visualize it. And yet you saw it, I merely saw you seeing it. For one instant you were the heaven-sent mediator between me and myself, you perceived that compact and solid entity which I was and wanted to be in just as simple and ordinary a way as I perceived you. For, after all, I exist, I am, though I have no sense of being; and it is an exquisite torment to discover in oneself such utterly unfounded certainty, such unsubstantiated pride. I then understood that one could not reach oneself except through another’s judgment, another’s hatred. And also through another’s love perhaps; but there is here no question of that. For this revelation I am not ungrateful to you. I do not know how you would describe our present relations. Not goodwill, nor wholly hatred. Put it that there is a corpse between us. My corpse.

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

I can always choose, but I ought to know that if I do not choose, I am still choosing.

[E]very man ought to say to himself, Am I really the kind of man who has the right to act in such a way that humanity might guide itself by my actions?

You didnt succeed. Well, what of that? Theres nothing to prove, you know, and the revolutions not a question of virtue but of effectiveness. There is no heaven. Theres work to be done, thats all. And you must do what youre cut out for; all the better if it comes easy to you. The best work is not the work that takes the most sacrifice. Its the work in which you can best succeed.

...freedom only gives you something to be sorry for.