841 Quotes by Jean-Paul Sartre

I’m going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become.

If you seek authenticity for authenticity’s sake you are no longer authentic.

You didn’t succeed. Well, what of that? There’s nothing to prove, you know, and the revolution’s not a question of virtue but of effectiveness. There is no heaven. There’s work to be done, that’s all. And you must do what you’re cut out for; all the better if it comes easy to you. The best work is not the work that takes the most sacrifice. It’s the work in which you can best succeed.

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.

Giacometti knows that space is a cancer on being, and eats everything; to sculpt, for him, is to take the fat off space, he compresses space, so as to drain off its exteriority.

Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself.

Suddenly they existed, then suddenly they existed no longer: existence is without memory; of the vanished it retains nothing – not even a memory. Existence everywhere, infinitely, in excess, for ever and everywhere; existence – which is limited only by existence.

To whomever gives a kiss or a blow Render a kiss or blow But to whomever gives when you are unable to return Offer all the hatred in your heart For you were slaves and he enslaves you.

Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself. Such is the first principle of existentialism.