Quotes from Jean-Paul Sartre

The poor don't know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.

One always dies too soon — or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

There's no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is--other people!

Quelquefois je m'approchais pour observer ces boîtes qui se fendaient comme des huîtres et je découvrais la nudité de leurs organes intérieurs, des feuilles blêmes et moisies, légèrement boursouflées, couvertes de veinules noires, qui buvaient l'encre et sentaient le champignon.

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.

Yani sen...bütün o... anl?k trajediler, içinde maskelerin, ÅŸallar?n, mobilyalar?n ve benim birer küçük rol, senin de büyük bir rol oynad???n trajediler bitti mi art?k?

Nothing can interrupt it yet all can break it.

Thus pleasure itself, also becoming a right, lost its aggressive futility.

The flesh is the pure contingency of presence.

La mayor parte del tiempo, al no unirse a palabras, mis pensamientos quedan en la niebla. Dibujan formas claras y agradables, se disipan; en seguida las olvido.

Obviously, nothing new has happened in a manner of speaking. This morning, at a quarter past eight, as I was leaving the Hôtel Printania to go to the library, I tried to pick up a piece of paper lying on the ground and didn't succeed. That's all, and it isn't even an event. Yes, but, to tell the whole truth, it made a profound impression on me: it occurred to me that I was no longer free.

But I can't see anything any more: however much I search the past I can only retrieve scraps of images and I am not sure what they represent, nor whether they are remembered or invented.

Existentialism is not atheist in the sense that it would exhaust itself in demonstrations of the non-existence of God. It declares, rather, that even if God existed that would make no difference from its point of view. Not that we believe God does exist, but we think that the real problem is not that of His existence; what man needs is to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God.

Everything happens to every man as though the whole human race had its eyes fixed upon what he is doing and regulated its conduct accordingly.

First, it has been charged with inviting people to remain in a kind of desperate quietism because, since no solutions are possible, we should have to consider action in this world as quite impossible. We should then end up in a philosophy of contemplation; and since contemplation is a luxury, we come in the end to a bourgeois philosophy. The communists in particular have made these charges.

I exist because I think … and I can't stop myself from thinking. At this very moment–it's frightful–if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing.

Chitchat debases a language.

L'existence précède l'essence

But an adventure never returns nor is prolonged.

Those who conceal from themselves this total freedom, under the guise of solemnity, or by making deterministic excuses, I will call cowards. Others, who try to prove their existence is necessary, when man's appearance on earth is merely contingent, I will call bastards.

what summits would I not reach if my own life made the subject of the melody.

Love's a grand solace, isn't it, my friend? Deep and dark as sleep.

That is the idea I shall try to convey when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet, in other respects is free; because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. The existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never agree that a sweeping passion is a ravaging torrent which fatally leads a man to certain acts and is therefore an excuse. He thinks that man is responsible for his passion.

Only he who knows how to speak can be silent.