It answers the question that was tormenting you: my love, you are not ‘one thing in my life’ – not even the most important – because my life no longer belongs to me because…you are always me.
Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. It is up to you to give [life] a meaning.
She smiled and said with an ecstatic air: “It shines like a little diamond”,”What does?””This moment. It is round, it hangs in empty space like a little diamond; I am eternal.
Life has no meaning, the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.
I never could bear the idea of anyone’s expecting something from me. Italways made me want to do just the opposite.
There is only one day left, always starting over: It is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.
It is therefore senseless to think of complaining since nothing foreign has decided what we feel, what we live, or what we are.
In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.
Il n’y a de réalité que dans l’action.(There is no reality except in action.)
Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.
Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth.
the worst part about being lied to is knowing you werent worth the truth
That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.
At an age when most children are playing hopscotch or with their dolls,you, poor child, who had no friends or toys, you toyed with dreams of murder, because that is a game to play alone.
Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.
A kiss without a moustache, they said then, is like an egg without salt; I will add to it: and it is like Good without Evil.
I had found my religion: nothing seemed more important to me than a book. I saw the library as a temple.
Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realizes himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.
So this is hell. I’d never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the “burning marl.” Old wives’ tales! There’s no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is—other people!
People. You must love people. Men are admirable. I wantto vomit—and suddenly, there it is: the Nausea
Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.
Better to die on one’s feet than to live on one’s knees.
A human being who wakened in the morning with a queesy stomach, with fifteen hours to kill before next bedtime, had not much use for freedom.
There are two ways to go to the gas chamber, free and not free.
He raised himself on his hands and looked at Irene’s face: the nudity of that feminine body had risen into her face, the body had reabsorbed it, as nature reabsorbs forsaken gardens.
The aim of language…is to communicate…to impart to others the results one has obtained…As I talk, I reveal the situation…I reveal it to myself and to others in order to change it.
What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world-and defines himself afterward.
It is certain that we cannot escape anguish, for we are anguish.
It’s the well-behaved children that make the most formidable revolutionaries. They don’t say a word, they don’t hide under the table, they eat only one piece of chocolate at a time. But later on, they make society pay dearly.
It is the good children, Madame, who make the most terrible revolutionaries. They say nothing, they do not hide under the table, they eat only one sweet at a time, but later on, they make Society pay dearly for it!
People who live in society have learnt how to see themselves, in mirrors, as they appear to their friends. I have no friends: is that why my flesh is so naked?
Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.
People are like dice. We throw ourselves in the direction of our own choosing.
She believed in nothing. Only her scepticism kept her from being an atheist.
I confused things with their names: that is belief.
To believe is to know you believe, and to know you believe is not to believe.
Still, somewhere in the depths of ourselves we all harbor an ashamed, unsatisfied melancholy that quietly awaits a funeral.
There is no reality except in action. Man is nothing else than his plan; he exists only to the extent that he fulfills himself; he is therefore nothing else than the ensemble of his acts, nothing else than his life.
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.
If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.
We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.
Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being – like a worm.
Be self-indulgent, and those who are also self-indulgent will like you. Tear your neighbor to pieces, and the other neighbors will laugh. But if you beat your soul, all souls will cry out.
Much more likely you’ll hurt me. Still what does it matter? If I’ve got to suffer, it may as well be at your hands, your pretty hands.
Amuse yourself, torment your desires. Drink when you’re thirsty — that would be very much too simple! If you didn’t harbour a temptation eternally in your soul, you’d run the risk of forgetting yourself.
Poetry creates the myth, the prose writer draws its portrait.
For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.
You’re lucky. I’m always conscious of myself —in my mind. Painfully conscious.
I’d come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clear-cut language.
My odd feelings of the other week seem to me quite ridiculous today: I can no longer enter into them.
Be quiet! Anyone can spit in my face, and call me a criminal and a prostitute. But no one has the right to judge my remorse.
Love or hatred calls for self-surrender. He cuts a fine figure, the warm-blooded, prosperous man, solidly entrenched in his well-being, who one fine day surrenders all to love—or to hatred; himself, his house, his land, his memories.
Man is fully responsible for his nature, choices and lifestyle.
This instant which I cannot leave, which locks me in and limits me on every side, this instant I am made of will be no more than a confused dream.
I think of death only with tranquility, as an end. I refuse to let death hamper life. Death must enter life only to define it.
After all, she is lucky. I have been much too calm these past three years. I can receive nothing more from these tragic solitudes than a little empty purity. I leave.
Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance.
The most clear-sided view of the darkest possible situation is itself an act of optimism
Naturally, in the course of my life I have made lots of mistakes, large and small, for one reason or another, but at the heart of it all, every time I made a mistake it was because I was not radical enough.
I’ve lived the life of a man without teeth, he thought about it. A life of a man without teeth. I’ve never bitten, I’ve been waiting, keeping myself for later – and now I’ve just ascertained that I don’t have teeth anymore.
What’s done at night belongs to the night. In the daytime you don’t talk about it.
emotion is first of all and in principle an accident
Perhaps it was a passing moment of madness after all. There is no trace of it any more. My odd feelings of the other week seem to me quite ridiculous today: I can no longer enter into them.
So you realized that there were always women in tears, or a red-headed man, or something else to spoil your effects?””Yes, naturally.
The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.
Life has no meaning a priori… It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.
There is no human nature, since there is no god to conceive it.
A little more and I would have fallen into the mirror trap. I avoided it, but only to fall into the window trap: with nothing to do, my arms dangling, I go over to the window.
Existentialism’s first move is to make every man aware of what he is and to make the full responsibility of his existence rest on him.
I can always choose, but I ought to know that if I do not choose, I am still choosing.
[E]very man ought to say to himself, “Am I really the kind of man who has the right to act in such a way that humanity might guide itself by my actions?
…freedom only gives you something to be sorry for.
Thus it amounts to the same thing whether one gets drunk alone or is a leader of nations.
With older people, it’s quite different. They’re reliable, they show you what to do, and there’s solidity in their affection.
I see the insipid flesh blossoming and palpitating with abandon.
Man lives in the midst of images. Literature offers him a critical image of himself.
He takes a few dazed steps, the waiters turn out the lights and he slips into unconsciousness: when this man is lonely he sleeps.
The poor don’t know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.
Man is not only that which he conceives himself to be, but that which he wills himself to be…
Good digestions, the gray monotony of provincial life, and the boredom—ah the soul-destroying boredom—of long days of mild content.
We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seeded refusal of that which others have made of us.
Once freedom lights its beacon in a man’s heart the gods are powerless against him.
Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.
Once you hear the details of victory it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.
The poor don’t know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.
Two people can form a community by excluding a third.
3 o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.
The writer is committed when he plunges to the very depths of himself with the intent to disclose not his individuality but his person in the complex society that conditions and supports him.
Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.
Total war is no longer war waged by all members of one national community against all those of another. It is total… because it may well involve the whole world.
All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure.
It is only in our decisions that we are important.
Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.
I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men.
One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life.
Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.
Ah! yes, I know: those who see me rarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it.
Only the guy who isn’t rowing has time to rock the boat.
If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I’m still waiting, it’s all been to seduce women basically.
The best work is not what is most difficult for you it is what you do best.
Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.
Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.
Everything has been figured out, except how to live.
It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.
If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company.
There are two types of poor people, those who are poor together and those who are poor alone. The first are the true poor, the others are rich people out of luck.