Top Sartre Quotes

He began as a minor imitator of Fitzgerald, wrote a novel in the late twenties which won a prize, became dissatisfied with his work, stopped writing for a period of years. When he came back it was to...

Still, somewhere in the depths of ourselves we all harbor an ashamed, unsatisfied melancholy that quietly awaits a funeral.

I lean all my weight on the porcelain ledge, I draw my face closer until it touches the mirror. The eyes, nose, and mouth disappear. Nothing is left. Brown wrinkles show on each side of the feverish s...

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...

The Nausea has stayed down there, in the yellow light. I am happy: this cold is so pure, this night so pure: am I myself not a wave of icy air? With neither blood, nor lymph, nor flesh. Flowing down t...

Perhaps it is impossible to understand one's own face ... People who live in society have learned how to see themselves in mirrors as they appear to their friends. I have no friends. Is that why my fl...

I feel my hand. I am these two beasts struggling at the end of my arms. My hand scratches one of its paws with the nail of the other paw; I feel its weight on the table which is not me. It's long, lon...

I thought I saw Anny smiling. I try to refresh my memory: I need to feel all the tenderness that Anny inspires; it is there, this tenderness, it is near me, only asking to be born. But the smile does...

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 whi...

In the heat of the battle, all internal barriers break down; the puppet bourgeoisie of businessmen and shopkeepers, the urban proletariat, which is always in a privileged position, the lumpen-proletar...

There can be no doubt that the chief fault we have developed, through the long course of human evolution, is a certain basic passivity. When provoked by challenges, human beings are magnificent. When...

Setting fire to the roofs, getting away with the loot, suiting herself. She studied modern philosophy, read Sartre on the side, smoked Gitanes, and cultivated a look of bored contempt. But inwardly, s...

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 yours...

Perhaps it is impossible to understand one's own face. Or perhaps it is because I am a single man? People who live in society have learned how to see themselves in mirrors as they appear to their frie...

Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.

Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that's all. There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable, monotonous add...

He is betrayed by the cynical sparkle of her eyes, by her sophisticated look. Real ladies do not know the price of things, they like adorable follies; their eyes are like beautiful, hothouse flowers.

[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?

I can always choose, but I ought to know that if I do not choose, I am still choosing.

L'existentialiste, au contraire, pense qu'il est très gênant que Dieu n'existe pas, car avec lui disparaît toute possibilité de trouver des valeurs dans un ciel intelligible; il ne peut plus y avoir d...