841 Quotes by Jean-Paul Sartre

The existent individual, as Kierkegaard defines him, is first of all he who is in an infinite relationship with himself and has an infinite interest in himself and his destiny. Secondly, the existent individual always feels himself to be in Becoming, with a task before him;.

I am sure that fifteen minutes would be enough to reach supreme self-contempt. No thank you, I want none of that.

I shall have to get used all over again to speaking to people without touching them.

Everything that burns, everything that rips me apart, I want to suffer with my body. I’d rather have a hundred wounds, whips, poisons – than this kind of suffering in the head, this phantom of suffering, which touches me softly and caresses me without ever really hurting.

My memories are like coins in the devil’s purse: when you open it you find only dead leaves.

We stay silent for a moment. Evening is coming on; I can hardly make out the pale spot of her face. Her black dress melts with the shadow which floods the room. I pick up my cup mechanically, there’s a little tea left in it and I bring it to my lips. The tea is cold. I want to smoke but I don’t dare. I have the terrible feeling that we have nothing more to say to one another.

Madame Picard believed that a child should be allowed to read anything: ‘A book never does any harm if it is well written.’ While she was there, I had once asked permission to read Madame Bovary and my mother, in an oversweet voice, had said: ‘But if my darling reads books like that at his age, what will he do when he grows up?’ ‘I shall live them!’ This reply had met with the most complete and lasting success.

Something has happened to me, I can’t doubt it any more. It came as an illness does, not like an ordinary certainty, not like anything evident. It came cunningly, little by little; I felt a little strange, a little put out, that’s all. Once established it never moved, it stayed quiet, and I was able to persuade myself that nothing was the matter with me, that it was a false alarm. And now, it’s blossoming.

Love was not something to be felt, not a particular emotion, nor yet a particular shade of feeling, it was much more like a lowering curse on the horizon, a precursor of disaster.