Jean-Paul Sartre
In 1964, the Swedish Academy awarded Jean-Paul Sartre the Nobel Prize in Literature, a recognition that drew international attention to work he had been producing across several decades.
Born in Paris on 21 June 1905, Sartre was educated at Cours Hattemer, Lycée Louis-le-Grand, Lycée Henri-IV, and the École Normale Supérieure, as well as the University of Paris. Writing in French, he worked across a wide range of forms — philosophy, novels, plays, screenplays, essays, biography, and literary criticism. His output was rooted in existentialism and associated with both phenomenology and Marxism, placing him within French philosophical tradition. Alongside his writing, he was active as a political activist throughout his career.
Sartre died on 15 April 1980 in the 14th arrondissement of Paris. The Nobel Prize in Literature he received in 1964 stands as a concrete marker of the scope of his output as a philosopher, novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, biographer, and literary critic.
Quotes by Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre's insights on:
The simplest, most indefinable quality had too much content, in relation to itself, in its heart.
Anyhow, it is a definite colour: I am glad I have red hair. There is it is in the mirror, it makes itself seen, it shines. I am still lucky if my forehead was surmounted by one of those neutral heads of hair which are neither chestnut not blond, my face would be lost in vagueness, it would make me dizzy.
You see a woman, you think that one day she’ll be old, only you don’t see her grow old. But there are moments when you think you see her grow old and feel yourself growing old with her: this is the feeling of adventure.
Oppressed with countless little daily cares, he had waited... For an act. A free, considered act; that should pledge his whole life, and stand at the beginning of a new existence.
