Quotessence
Home / Authors / Jean-Paul Sartre Books
Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre Books

Philosopher

Nausea

A source page for quotes linked to Jean-Paul Sartre.

0 quotes

No Exit

A source page for quotes linked to Jean-Paul Sartre.

0 quotes

Les Mains sales

A source page for quotes linked to Jean-Paul Sartre.

0 quotes

The Reprieve

A source page for quotes linked to Jean-Paul Sartre.

0 quotes

Words

A source page for quotes linked to Jean-Paul Sartre.

0 quotes

Black Orpheus

A source page for quotes linked to Jean-Paul Sartre.

0 quotes

Bulantı

A source page for quotes linked to Jean-Paul Sartre.

0 quotes

Existentialism

A source page for quotes linked to Jean-Paul Sartre.

0 quotes

La náusea

A source page for quotes linked to Jean-Paul Sartre.

0 quotes

Sartre on Cuba

A source page for quotes linked to Jean-Paul Sartre.

0 quotes

The Wall

A source page for quotes linked to Jean-Paul Sartre.

0 quotes

Related Quotes

“My whole life is behind me. I see it completely, I see its shape and the slow movements which have brought me this far. There is little to say about it: a lost game, that’s all. I had lost the first round. I wanted to play the second and I lost again: I lost the whole game. At the same time, I learned that you always lose. Only the rascals think they win. Now I am going to be like Anny, I am going to outlive myself. Eat, sleep, sleep, eat. Exist slowly, softly, like these trees, like a puddle of water, like the red bench in the streetcar.”

“We speak more freely of our emotional complexes than of our material condition or of our socio-professional milieu; we prefer to ask ourselves about the homosexual component of our characters than about the history which has made us and which we have made. We too are victims and accomplices of alienation, reification, mystification. We too stagger beneath 'the weight of things said and done', of lies accepted and transmitted without belief. But we have no wish to know it. We are like sleepwalkers treading in a gutter, dreaming of our genitals rather than looking at our feet.”

“Atheistic existentialism, of which I am a representative, declares with greater consistency that if God does not exist there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it. That being is man....”

“The doctor wasn't the one to let himself be hypnotized by an old madman on the verge of having his fit; one good blow, a few rough, lashing words, that's what they need. The doctor has experience. He is a professional in experience: doctors, priests, magistrates and army officers know men through and through as if they had made them. I am ashamed for M. Achille. We are on the same side, we should have stood up against them. But he left me, he went over to theirs: he honestly believes in experience. Not in his, not in mine. In Doctor Roge's.”

“In 1787, at an inn near Moulins, an old man was dying, a friend of Diderot, trained by the philosophers. The priests of the neighbourhood were nonplussed: they had tried everything in vain; the good man would have no last rites, he was a pantheist. M. de Rollebon, who was passing by and who believed in nothing, bet the Cure of Moulins that he would need less than two hours to bring the sick man back to Christian sentiments. The Cure took the bet and lost: Rollebon began at three in the morning, the sick man confessed at five and died at seven. “Are you so forceful in argument?” asked the Cure, “You outdo even us.” “I did not argue,” answered M. de Rollebon, “I made him fear Hell.”

“Well, you're free without wanting to be,' he explained, 'it just happens so, that's all. But Mathieu's freedom is based on reason.' 'I still don't understand,' said Lola, shaking her head. 'Well, he doesn't care a curse about his apartment: he lives there just as he would live anywhere else, and I've got the feeling that he doesn't care much about his girl. He stays with her because he must sleep with someone. His freedom isn't visible, it's inside him.”

“The vocal chorus will be along shortly: I like that part especially and the abrupt manner in which it throws itself forward, like a cliff against the sea. For the moment, the jazz is playing; there is no melody, only notes, a myriad of tiny jolts. They know no rest, an inflexible order gives birth to them and destroys them without even giving them time to recuperate and exist for themselves. They race, they press forward, they strike me a sharp blow in passing and are obliterated. I would like to hold them back, but I know if I succeeded in stopping one it would remain between my fingers only as a raffish languishing sound. I must accept their death; I must even will it. I know few impressions stronger or more harsh.”

“It is the reflection of my face. Often in these lost days I study it: I can understand nothing of this face. The faces of others have some sense, some direction. Not mine. I cannot even decide whether it is handsome or ugly. I think it is ugly because I have been told so. But it doesn't strike me. At heart, I am even shocked that anyone can attribute qualities of this kind to it, as if you called a clod of earth or a block of stone beautiful or ugly.”