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All That I Know About My Life, It Seems, I Have Learned In Books.
-Jean-Paul Sartre
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All That I Know

Jean-Paul Sartre
...
All That I Know About My Life, It Seems, I Have Learned In Books.

Understanding the Quote: "all that i know about my life, it seems, i have learned..."

This quote by Jean-Paul Sartre reflects deeply on the theme of book. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Book, Philosophical, I Have Learned, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Jean-Paul Sartre interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre is celebrated for insightful thoughts on book and philosophical. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Book
Philosophical
I Have Learned
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Never Have I Thought That I Was The Happy Possessor Of A "talent;" My Sole Concern Has Been To Save Myself By Work And Faith.
Happiness
Faith
Talent
To Read A Poem In January Is As Lovely As To Go For A Walk In June
Summer
June
Lovely
A Man Who Is Free Is Like A Mangy Sheep In A Herd. He Will Contaminate My Entire Kingdom And Ruin My Work.
Men
Sheep
Kingdoms
L'homme Est Une Passion Inutile. Man Is A Useless Passion.
Passion
Men
Useless
Il N'y A De Réalité Que Dans L'action. (there Is No Reality Except In Action.)
Reality
Action
Existentialism
It Is Disgusting -- Why Must We Have Bodies?
Body
Disgusting
I Know Only One Church: It Is The Society Of Men.
Men
Church
Knows
He Walked On In Silence, The Solitary Sound Of His Footsteps Echoing In His Head, As In A Deserted Street, At Dawn. His Solitude Was So Complete, Beneath A Lovely Sky As Mellow And Serene As A Good Conscience, Amid That Busy Throng, That He Was Amazed At His Own Existence; He Must Be Somebody Else's Nightmare, And Whoever It Was Would Certainly Awaken Soon.
Sky
Silence
Solitude
Life Is A Useless Passion.
Passion
Useless
Life Is
The Consciousness That Says 'i Am' Is Not The Consciousness That Thinks.
Thinking
Consciousness
What Never Vary Are The Necessities Of Being In The World, Of Having To Labor And To Die There.
Life
World
Labor
Smooth And Smiling Faces Everywhere, But Ruin In Their Eyes.
Eye
Ruins
Faces
Thus It Amounts To The Same Thing Whether One Gets Drunk Alone Or Is A Leader Of Nations.
Inspirational
Drunk
Leader
The Characteristic Of Every Neurosis Is To Represent Itself As Natural.
Neurosis
Natural
Characteristics
I Am Not Virtuous. Our Sons Will Be If We Shed Enough Blood To Give Them The Right To Be.
Son
Blood
Giving
I Think There Is An Enormous Diference Between Speaking And Writing. One Rereads What One Writes. But One Might Read It Slowly Or Quickly. In Other Words, You Do Not Know How Long You Will Have To Spend Deliberating Over A Sentence. ... But If I Listen To A Tape Recorder, The Listening Time Is Determined By The Speed At Which The Tape Turns And Not By My Own Needs.
Writing
Thinking
Long
I Am Not Asking For Sensational Revelations, But I Would Like To Sense The Meaning Of That Minute, To Feel It's Urgency.
Asking
Revelations
Minutes
We Make Our Own Hell Out Of The People Around Us.
People
Hell
When The Rich [and Politically Powerful] Make War, It's The Poor [and Politically Weak] Who Die.
Powerful
War
Rich
I Had Been Playing With Matches And Burned A Small Rug. I Was In The Process Of Covering Up My Crime When Suddenly God Saw Me. I Felt His Gaze Inside My Head And On My Hands....i Flew Into A Rage Against So Crude An Indiscretion, I Blasphemed....he Never Looked At Me Again....i Had The More Difficulty Getting Rid Of Him The Holy Ghost In That He Had Installed Himself At The Back Of My Head....i Collared The Holy Ghost In The Cellar And Threw Him Out.
God
Hands
Covering
The Way, Applicable In Our Non-revolutionary Societies, To Prepare For The Time When Everyone Will Read, Is To Pose Problems In The Most Radical And Intransigent Manner. This Is What Alain Badiou Has Just Done In Almagestes, Where He Puts Language On Trial With An Intention Of Cleansing, Of Catharsis.
Done
Trials
Way
What's Done At Night Belongs To The Night. In The Daytime You Don't Talk About It.
Night
Done
Daytime
In The State I Was In, If Someone Had Come And Told Me I Could Go Home Quietly, That They Would Leave Me My Life Whole, It Would Have Left Me Cold: Several Hours Or Several Years Of Waiting Is All The Same When You Have Lost The Illusion Of Being Eternal.
Home
Years
Waiting
We Cannot Withdraw Our Cards From The Game. Were We As Silent And Mute As Stones, Our Very Passivity Would Be An Act.
Life
Games
Would Be
Let It Crumble! Let The Rocks Revile Me And Flowers Wilt At My Coming. Your Whole Universe Is Not Enough To Prove Me Wrong. You Are The King Of Gods, King Of Stones And Stars, King Of The Waves Of The Sea. But You Are Not The King Of Man.
Kings
Stars
Flower
To Be Responsible Is To Be The Uncontested Author Of An Event Or Thing.
Events
Responsible
Being Responsible
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.
Support
Individuality
Depth
[lost Of The Absolute] Is In This Sense That ''i No Longer Know What To Do With My Life" Must Be Understood. Critics Have Been Mistaken About The Meaning Of This Phrase, Seeing In It A Cry Of Despair As In Simone De Beauvoir's "i Have Been Cheated." When She Uses This Word It Is To Indicate That She Claims From Life An Absolute Which She Cannot Find There.
Despair
Phrases
Use
Man Must Be Invented Each Day
Inspiration
Men
Each Day
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.
Memories
Cutting
Men
I Had Found My Religion: Nothing Seemed More Important To Me Than A Book. I Saw The Library As A Temple.
Book
Important
Library
What Do I Care About Jupiter? Justice Is A Human Issue, And I Do Not Need A God To Teach It To Me.
Philosophical
Umpires
Issues
Ha! To Forget. How Childish! I Feel You In My Bones. Your Silence Screams In My Ears. You May Nail Your Mouth Shut, You May Cut Out Your Tongue, Can You Keep Yourself From Existing? Will You Stop Your Thoughts.
Cutting
Silence
Nails
Something Begins In Order To End: An Adventure Doesn't Let Itself Be Extended It Achieves Significance Only Through Its Death.
Adventure
Order
Achieve
Many Young People Today Do Not Concern Themselves With Style. They Think That What One Says Should Be Said Simply And That Is All. For Me, Style - Which Does Not Exclude Simplicity, Quite The Opposite - Is Above All A Way Of Saying Three Or Four Things In One. There Is The Simple Sentence, With Its Immediate Meaning, And Then At The Same Time, Below This Immediate Meaning, Other Meanings Are Organized. If One Is Not Capable Of Giving Language This Plurality Of Meaning, Then It Is Not Worth The Trouble To Write.
Writing
Simple
Thinking
The Viable Jewels Of Life Remain Untouched When Man Forgets His Vocation Of Searching For The Truth Of His Existence.
Men
Jewels
Forget
Why Do You Keep Maintaining Your Ideas Are Right If You Can't Prove Them?
Ideas
Maintaining
Prove
What Is Life But An Unpleasant Interruption To A Peaceful Nonexistence.
Peaceful
What Is Life
Interruptions
Before You Come Alive, Life Is Nothing; It 's Up To You To Give It A Meaning, And Value Is Nothing Else But The Meaning That You Choose.
Giving
Up To You
Life Has No Meaning
Man Exists, Turns Up, Appears On The Scene And Only Afterwards, Defines Himself
Men
Scene
Turns
I Do Not Believe In God; His Existence Has Been Disproved By Science. But In The Concentration Camp, I Learned To Believe In Men.
Believe
Men
Existence
Every Word Has Consequences. Every Silence, Too.
Silence
Consequence
I Believe, I Desire, That Social And Economic Ills May Be Remedied.
Believe
Desire
May
Handing Over A Bank Note Is Enough To Make A Bicycle Belong To Me, But My Entire Life Is Needed To Realize This Possession.
Cycling
Realizing
Life Is
Man Is Condemned To Be Free
Freedom
Philosophy
Philosophical
You Take Souls For Vegetables.... The Gardener Can Decide What Will Become Of His Carrots But No One Can Choose The Good Of Others For Them.
Vegetables
Soul
Carrots
A Writer Must Refuse To Allow Himself To Be Transformed Into An Institution, Even If It Takes Place In The Most Honorable Form.
Honesty
Integrity
Character
Man Is Condemned To Be Free; Because Once Thrown Into The World, He Is Responsible For Everything He Does.
Life
Freedom
Responsibility
All That I Know About My Life, It Seems, I Have Learned In Books.
Book
Philosophical
I Have Learned
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.
Morning
Fifteen
Next
There Is No Human Nature, Since There Is No God To Conceive It.
Existentialism
Human Nature
There Is No God
Nothingness Haunts Being.
Existentialism
Nothingness
I Said To Myself, 'i Want To Die Decently'.
Want
Said
Dies
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.
Death
Existence Of Life
Existentialism
A Soviet Citizen, An Official Writer, Once Said To Me: "the Day When Communism (that Is, Well-being For Everyone) Reigns, Man's Tragedy Will Begin: His Finitude."
Men
Tragedy
Reign
I Have Crossed The Seas, I Have Left Cities Behind Me, And I Have Followed The Source Of Rivers Towards Their Source Or Plunged Into Forests, Always Making For Other Cities. I Have Had Women, I Have Fought With Men ; And I Could Never Turn Back Any More Than A Record Can Spin In Reverse. And All That Was Leading Me Where ? To This Very Moment.
Men
Sea
Cities
It Was Odd, He Thought, That A Man Could Hate Himself As Though He Were Someone Else.
Hate
Men
Odd
Words Are Loaded Pistols.
Thought Provoking
Pistols
Existentialism
The World Would Get Along Very Well Without Literature. It Would Get Along Even Better Without Man.
Men
Literature
World
You Must Be Like Me; You Must Suffer In Rhythm.
Suffering
Rhythm
Like Me
We Do Not Wish To Say Only That A Man Is Responsible For His Own Individuality, But That He Is Responsible For That Of All Men.
Men
Individuality
Wish
Hell Is For Other People.
People
Hell
I Am No Longer Sure Of Anything. If I Satiate My Desires, I Sin But I Deliver Myself From Them; If I Refuse To Satisfy Them, They Infect The Whole Soul.
Soul
Desire
Existentialism
It Is Enough That One Man Hate Another For Hate To Gain, Little By Little, All Mankind.
Hate
Men
Hatred
Generosity Is Nothing Else Than A Craze To Possess. All Which I Abandon, All Which I Give, I Enjoy In A Higher Manner Through The Fact That I Give It Away. To Give Is To Enjoy Possessively The Object Which One Gives.
Generosity
Giving
Facts
From The Period When I Wrote La Nausea I Wanted To Create A Morality. My Evolution Consists In My No Longer Dreaming Of Doing So.
Dream
Nausea
Morality
What I Lacked [in La Nausee] Was A Sense Of Reality. I Have Changed Since. I Have Slowly Learned To Experience Reality.
Reality
Changed
I Have Changed
Perception Is Naturally Surpassed Toward Action; Better Yet, It Can Be Revealed Only In And Through Projects Of Action. The World Is Revealed As An "always Future Hollow", For We Are Always Future To Ourselves.
Perception
World
Action
I Enjoy Feeling Fastidious And Aloof. I Enjoy Saying No, Always No, And I Should Be Afraid Of Any Attempt To Construct A Finally Habitable World, Because I Should Merely Have To Say - Yes; And Act Like Other People.
People
Feelings
World
Generally Speaking There Is No Irreducible Taste Or Inclination. They All Represent A Certain Appropriative Choice Of Being. It Is Up To Existential Psychoanalysis To Compare And Classify Them. Ontology Abandons Us Here; It Has Merely Enabled Us To Determine The Ultimate Ends Of Human Reality, Its Fundamental Possibilities, And The Value Which Haunts It.
Reality
Choices
Fundamentals
All-powerful God, Who Am I But The Fear That I Inspire In Others?
Powerful
Inspire
Powerful God
Everything In My Past, In My Training, Everything That Has Been Most Essential In My Activity Up To Now Has Made Me Above All A Man Who Writes, And It Is Too Late For That To Change.
Writing
Past
Men
Emotion Is First Of All And In Principle An Accident
Principles
Firsts
Emotion
Politics Is A Science. You Can Demonstrate That You Are Right And That Others Are Wrong.
Philosophical
Science
Technology
I'd Come To Realize That All Our Troubles Spring From Our Failure To Use Plain, Clear-cut Language.
Spring
Cutting
Use
My Eyes Feel All Soft, All Soft As Flesh. I'm Going To Sleep.
Sleep
Eye
Flesh
My Thought Is Me: That Is Why I Cannot Stop Thinking. I Exist Because I Think I Cannot Keep From Thinking.
Thinking
My Thoughts
You Must Be Afraid, My Son. That Is How One Becomes An Honest Citizen.
Son
House
Citizens
I Found The Human Heart Empty And Insipid Everywhere Except In Books.
Book
Heart
Empty
If You Seek Authenticity For Authenticity's Sake You Are No Longer Authentic.
Sake
Authenticity
Ifs
I Respect Orders But I Respect Myself Too And I Do Not Obey Foolish Rules Made Especially To Humiliate Me.
Order
Foolish
Made
I Never Could Bear The Idea Of Anyone's Expecting Something From Me. It Always Made Me Want To Do Just The Opposite.
Opposites
Ideas
Expecting Something
Death Is A Continuation Of My Life Without Me.
Death
Existentialism
Continuation
We Do Not Know What We Want And Yet We Are Responsible For What We Are - That Is The Fact.
Philosophy
Philosophical
Want
There Are Two Kinds Of Existentialist; First, Those Who Are Christian...and On The Other Hand The Atheistic Existentialists, Among Whom...i Class Myself. What They Have In Common Is That They Think That Existence Precedes Essence, Or, If You Prefer, That Subjectivity Must Be The Turning Point.
Christian
Atheist
Thinking
I Was Escaping From Nature And At Last Becoming Myself, That Other Whom I Was Aspiring To Be In The Eyes Of Others.
Nature
Eye
Escaping
So Long As One Believes In God, One Has The Right To Do The Good In Order To Be Moral.
Believe
Order
Long
When We Love Animals And Children Too Much, We Love Them At The Expense Of Men.
Love
Children
Animal
I Wanted The Moments Of My Life To Follow And Order Themselves Like Those Of A Life Remembered. You Might As Well Try And Catch Time By The Tail.
Order
Trying
Tails
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.
Peace
War
Community
Life Gave Me Everything I Asked If All I Asked Was Not A Great Deal, That's My Problem!
Problem
Deals
Ifs
And I Too Wanted To Be. That Is All I Wanted; And This Is The Last Word. At The Bottom Of All These Attempts Which Seemed Without Bounds, I Find The Same Desire Again: To Drive Existence Out Of Me, To Rid The Passing Moments Of Their Fat, To Twist Them, Dry Them, Purify Myself, Harden Myself, To Give Back At Last The Sharp, Precise Sound Of A Saxophone Note. That Could Even Make An Apologue: There Was A Poor Man Who Got In The Wrong World.
Men
Giving
Desire
Acting Is A Question Of Absorbing Other People's Personalities And Adding Some Of Your Own Experience.
People
Personality
Acting
We Do Not Judge The People We Love.
Love
People
Judging
Neither Sex, Without Some Fertilization Of The Complimentary Characters Of The Other, Is Capable Of The Highest Reaches Of Human Endeavor.
Sex
Character
Endeavor
This Is The Basis For The Joy Of Love When There Is Joy; We Feel That Our Existence Is Justified.
Joy
Justified
Existence
It Is Better; Heavier, Crueler. The Mouth You Wear For Hell.
Mouths
Hell
No Exit
The [communist] Party Has One Objective: The Creation Of A Socialist Economy; And One Means: The Utilization Of The Class Struggle.
Party
Struggle
Mean
Only The Guy Who Isn't Rowing Has Time To Rock The Boat.
Rocks
Guy
Sailing
On My Way To The Office In The Morning, There Are, In Front Of Me, Behind Me, Other Men Going To Their Jobs. I See Them; If I Dared, I Would Smile At Them. I Think To Myself That I Am A Socialist, That They Are The Purpose Of My Life, Of My Efforts And That They Do Not Know It Yet.
Morning
Jobs
Men
Things Are Entirely What They Appear To Be And Behind Them... There Is Nothing.
Spiritual
Spirituality
Behinds
We Are Our Choices.
Choices
Our Choices
The More One Is Absorbed In Fighting Evil, The Less One Is Tempted To Place The Good In Question.
Fighting
Evil
Tempted
I Had Realized In The Meantime That Action Too Has Its Difficulties, And That One Can Also Be Led To It By Neurosis. We Are Not Saved By Politics Any More Than By Literature.
Literature
Neurosis
Action
All Human Actions Are Equivalent... And All Are On Principle Doomed To Failure.
Fate
Principles
Action
I Grow Warm, I Begin To Feel Happy. There Is Nothing Extraordinary In This, It Is A Small Happiness Of Nausea: It Spreads At The Bottom Of The Viscous Puddle, At The Bottom Of Out Time - The Time Of Purple Suspenders, And Broken Chair Seats; It Is Made Of White, Soft Instants, Spreading At The Edge, Like An Oil Stain. No Sooner Than Born, It Is Already Old, It Seems As Though I Have Known It For Twenty Years.
Purple
Oil
White
Atheism Is A Cruel Long Term Business, And I Have Gone Through It To The End.
Long
Atheism
Gone
At Times Discreetly, At Times Disgustingly, I Yielded To The Most Fatal Temptation Whenever I Could No Longer Bear It: As A Result Of Impatience, Orpheus Lost Eurydice; As A Result Of Impatience, I Lost Myself.
Temptation
Bears
Impatience
Man Is Always Separated From What He Is By All The Breadth Of The Being Which He Is Not. He Makes Himself Known To Himself From The Other Side Of The World And He Looks From The Horizon Toward Himself To Recover His Inner Being.
Men
Horizon
Looks
Like Morality, Literature Needs To Be Universal. So That The Writer Must Put Himself On The Side Of The Majority, Of The Two Billion Starving, If He Wishes To Be Able To Speak To All And Be Read By All. Failing That, He Is At The Service Of A Privileged Class And, Like It, An Exploiter.
Class
Two
Wish
Un Homme N'est Rien D'autre Qu'une Se Rie D'entreprises. A Man Is No Other Than A Series Of Undertakings.
Men
Series
Undertakings
There Is Only One Day Left, Always Starting Over: It Is Given To Us At Dawn And Taken Away From Us At Dusk.
Philosophical
Taken
Sunset
I Construct My Memories With My Present. I Am Lost, Abandoned In The Present. I Try In Vain To Rejoin The Past: I Cannot Escape.
Memories
Past
Trying
Existence Precedes And Rules Essence.
Philosophical
Essence
Existence
I Consider Les Nourritures Terrestres As A Frightening Book: "look For God In No Other Place Than Everywhere." Go And Tell That To A Workman, An Engineer!
Book
Looks
Workmen
I Think [alain Robbe-grillet] A Good Writer, But He Speaks To The Comfortable Bourgeoisie.
Thinking
Bourgeoisie
Speak
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.
Love You
Important
Answers
As For The Square At Meknes, Where I Used To Go Every Day, It's Even Simpler: I Do Not See It At All Anymore. All That Remains Is The Vague Feeling That It Was Charming, And These Five Words That Are Indivisibly Bound Together: A Charming Square At Meknes. ... I Don't See Anything Any More: I Can Search The Past In Vain, I Can Only Find These Scraps Of Images And I Am Not Sure What They Represent, Whether They Are Memories Or Just Fiction.
Memories
Past
Squares
It Is Only In Our Decisions That We Are Important.
Decision
Important
Criminals Together. We're In Hell, My Little Friend, And There's Never Any Mistake There. People Are Not Damned For Nothing.
Mistake
People
Together
I Am Alone In The Midst Of These Happy, Reasonable Voices. All These Creatures Spend Their Time Explaining, Realizing Happily That They Agree With Each Other. In Heaven's Name, Why Is It So Important To Think The Same Things All Together.
Thinking
Names
Voice
This Then Is The Age Of Reason.
Age
Reason
Age Of Reason
A Madman's Ravings Are Absurd In Relation To The Situation In Which He Finds Himself, But Not In Relation To His Madness.
Madness
Absurd
Relation
Acting Is Happy Agony.
Agony
Acting
Man Is Nothing Else But What He Makes Of Himself.
Graduation
Freedom
Responsibility
If A Jew Is Fascinated By Christians It Is Not Because Of Their Virtues, Which He Values Little, But Because They Represent Anonymity, Humanity Without Race.
Christian
Race
Humanity
I Know. I Know That I Shall Never Again Meet Anything Or Anybody Who Will Inspire Me With Passion. You Know, It's Quite A Job Starting To Love Somebody. You Have To Have Energy, Generosity, Blindness. There Is Even A Moment, In The Very Beginning, When You Have To Jump Across A Precipice: If You Think About It You Don't Do It. I Know I'll Never Jump Again.
Jobs
Passion
Thinking
One Of The Chief Motives Of Artistic Creation Is Certainly The Need Of Feeling That We Are Essential In Relationship To The World.
Motivation
Feelings
Essentials
Night Is Falling: At Dusk, You Must Have Good Eyesight To Be Able To Tell The Good Lord From The Devil.
Fall
Night
Devil
Aegistheus, The Kings Have Another Secret.... Once Liberty Has Exploded In The Soul Of A Man, The Gods Can Do Nothing Against That Man. It Is A Matter For Men To Handle Amongst Themselves, And It Is Up To Other Men And To Them Alone To Let Him Flee Or To Destroy Him.
Kings
Men
Soul
Once Liberty Has Exploded In The Soul Of A Man, The Gods Can Do Nothing Against That Man.
Men
Soul
Liberty
Violence Is Good For Those Who Have Nothing To Lose.
Violence
Nothing To Lose
Loses
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?
Mirrors
People
No Friends
Good Digestions, The Gray Monotony Of Provincial Life, And The Boredom-ah The Soul-destroying Boredom-of Long Days Of Mild Content.
Bored
Long
Soul
I Have Always Been Happy. Even If I Had Been More Honest With Regard To Myself At That Moment I Should Still Have Written La Nausee.
Honest
Moments
That Moment
I Was Not The One To Invent Lies: They Were Created In A Society Divided By Class And Each Of Us Inherited Lies When We Were Born. It Is Not By Refusing To Lie That We Will Abolish Lies: It Is By Eradicating Class By Any Means Necessary.
Lying
Mean
Class
When My Relations With The Communist Party Gave Me The Necessary Perspective I Decided To Write My Autobiography. I Wanted To Show How A Man Can Pass From Literature Held Sacred To Action Which Nevertheless Remains That Of An Intellectual.
Party
Writing
Men
I Exist, That Is All, And I Find It Nauseating.
Existentialism
Existence
So Much Torture, Bloodshed, Deceit. You Cannot Make Your Young People Practice Torture Twenty-four Hours A Day And Not Expect To Pay A Price For It.
Lying
Practice
People
Ah! Do Not Judge The Gods, Young Man, They Have Painful Secrets.
Men
Judging
Secret
In Love, One And One Are One.
Love
Inspirational
Undone
Fear? If I Have Gained Anything By Damning Myself, It Is That I No Longer Have Anything To Fear.
Ifs
Abjection Is A Methodological Conversion, Like Cartesian Doubt And Husserlian Epoche: It Establishes The World As A Closed System Which Consciousness Regards From Without, In The Manner Of Divine Understanding.
Understanding
Doubt
World
I Considered Calmly That I Was Born To Write.
Writing
Born
We Are Now In A Position To Understand The Anti-semite. He Is A Man Who Is Afraid. Not Of The Jews, To Be Sure, But Of Himself, Of His Own Consciousness, Of His Liberty, Of His Instincts, Of His Responsibilities, Of Solitariness, Of Change, Of Society, And Of The World Of Everything Except The Jews.
Responsibility
Men
Liberty
I Wanted My Own Words. But The Ones I Use Have Dragged Through I Don't Know How Many Consciences.
Use
Wanted
Know How
It Is Too Early To Love. We Will Buy The Right To Do So By Shedding Blood.
Life
Blood
Shedding Blood
A Pale Reflection Of Myself Wavers In My Consciousness...and Suddenly The “i” Pales, Pales, And Fades Out.
Reflection
Consciousness
Pale
Ah! How I Hate The Crimes Of The New Generation: They Are Dry And Sterile As Darnel.
Hate
Generations
Dry
We Only Become What We Are By The Radical And Deep-seated Refusal Of That Which Others Have Made Of Us.
Inspirational
Learning
Growth
Evil Is The Product Of The Ability Of Humans To Make Abstract That Which Is Concrete.
Philosophical
Judging
Evil
The Plight Of Modern Man Is That He Is Condemmed To Be Free.
Men
Plight
Modern
At That Time [1954], As A Result Of Political Events, I Was Deeply Preoccupied By My Relations With The Communist Party.
Party
Political
Events
I Am Finishing A Biography Of [gustave] Flaubert. Because He Is The Opposite Of What I Am. One Needs To Rub Up Against Argument.
Opposites
Needs
Biographies
My Pessimism Has Never Been Flabby.
Pessimism
The Worst Part About Being Lied To Is Knowing You Werent Worth The Truth
Knowing
Being Lied
Lied
Freedom Is Existence, And In It Existence Precedes Essence.
Essence
Existence
He Who Asks A Question Is A Fool For A Minute; He Who Does Not Remains A Fool Forever. When You Realize That By Changing Your Perspective, Big Things Can Be Seen As Little Things, It Becomes Much Harder To Worry About Anything. Commitment Is An Act, Not A Word.
Commitment
Perspective
Worry
Everything Is Gratuitous, This Garden, This City And Myself. When You Suddenly Realize It, It Makes You Feel Sick And Everything Begins To Drift . . . That's Nausea.
Garden
Cities
Sick
Your Scare Me Rather. My Reflection In The Glass Never Did That; Of Course, I Knew It So Well. Like Something I Had Tamed...i'm Going To Smile, And My Smile Will Sink Down Into Your Pupils, And Heaven Knows What It Will Become.
Reflection
Glasses
Heaven
To Eat Is To Appropriate By Destruction.
Existentialism
Destruction
Appropriate
Do You Think I Can Read [alain] Robbe-grillet In An Underdeveloped Country? He Does Not Feel Himself Maimed.
Country
Thinking
Doe
I Want To Leave, To Go Somewhere Where I Should Be Really In My Place, Where I Would Fit In . . . But My Place Is Nowhere; I Am Unwanted.
Nausea
Want
Existentialism
He Was Free, Free In Every Way, Free To Behave Like A Fool Or A Machine, Free To Accept, Free To Refuse, Free To Equivocate; To Marry, To Give Up The Game, To Drag This Death Weight About With Him For Years To Come. He Could Do What He Liked, No One Had The Right To Advise Him, There Would Be For Him No Good Or Evil Unless He Thought Them Into Being.
Giving Up
Years
Games
If Literature Isn't Everything, It's Not Worth A Single Hour Of Someone's Trouble.
Philosophical
Literature
Trouble
Originally, Poetry Creates The Myth, While The Prose-writer Draws Its Portrait.
Writing
Portraits
Myth
I Must Be Without Remorse Or Regrets As I Am Without Excuse; For From The Instant Of My Upsurge Into Being, I Carry The Weight Of The World By Myself Alone Without Help, Engaged In A World For Which I Bear The Whole Responsibility Without Being Able, Whatever I Do, To Tear Myself Away From This Responsibility For An Instant.
Regret
Responsibility
Tears
We Will Freedom For Freedom’s Sake, In And Through Particular Circumstances. And In Thus Willing Freedom, We Discover That It Depends Entirely Upon The Freedom Of Others And That The Freedom Of Others Depends Upon Our Own. Obviously, Freedom As The Definition Of A Man Does Not Depend Upon Others, But As Soon As There Is A Commitment, I Am Obliged To Will The Liberty Of Others At The Same Time As My Own. I Cannot Make Liberty My Aim Unless I Make That Of Others Equally My Aim.
Commitment
Liberty
Doe
I Am Responsible For Everything... Except My Very Responsibility.
Responsibility
Responsible
I Had Dreamed My Life For Nearly Fifty Years (i Am About To Be Fifty-nine). But, You See, There Are Two Tones In Les Mats: The Echo Of This Condemnation And A Mitigation Of That Severity.
Two
Echoes
Years
Everything Has Been Figured Out, Except How To Live.
Life
Spiritual
Witty
In A Word, Man Must Create His Own Essence: It Is In Throwing Himself Into The World, Suffering There, Struggling There, That He Gradually Defines Himself.
Struggle
Men
Essence
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.
Children
Chocolate
Pieces
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.
Mistake
Heart
Reason
That’s What Existence Means: Draining One’s Own Self Dry Without The Sense Of Thirst.
Mean
Self
Dry
God Is Dead. Let Us Not Understand By This That He Does Not Exist Or Even That He No Longer Exists. He Is Dead. He Spoke To Us And Is Silent. We No Longer Have Anything But His Cadaver. Perhaps He Slipped Out Of The World, Somewhere Else Like The Soul Of A Dead Man. Perhaps He Was Only A Dream...god Is Dead.
Dream
Men
Somewhere Else
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.
Birthday
Philosophy
Class
Your Judgement Judges You And Defines You
Judging
Judgement
Define You
You See, The Contemporary Writer Must Write Through His Intimations Of Unease, While Trying To Elucidate Them.
Writing
Trying
Contemporary
L'homme Est Condamne A' E" Tre Libre. Man Is Condemned To Be Free.
Men
Libre
In Football Everything Is Complicated By The Presence Of The Opposite Team.
Soccer
Football
Team
Life Has No Meaning The Moment You Lose The Illusion Of Being Eternal.
Life
Existentialism
Moments
Man's Existence Precedes His Essence
Men
Essence
Human Nature
Because We Can Imagine, We Are Free.
Imagine
Man Is Not The Sum Of What He Has Already, But Rather The Sum Of What He Does Not Yet Have, Of What He Could Have.
Men
Doe
There Are Two Ways Of Destroying A People. Either Condemn Them En Bloc Or Force Them To Repudiate The Leaders They Adopted. The Second Is The Worse.
Two
People
Leader
I Suppose It Is Out Of Laziness That The World Is The Same Day After Day. Today It Seemed To Want To Change. And Then Anything, Anything Could Happen.
World
Laziness
Want
Don't You Feel The Same Way? When I Cannot See Myself, Even Though I Touch Myself, I Wonder If I Really Exist.
Way
Existentialism
Wonder
In Any Case, If You Ever Leave Me With A Handsome Man, Do Not Tell Me That You Trust Me Because, Let Me Warn You: That Is Not What Will Prevent Me From Deceiving You, If I Want To. On The Contrary.
Men
Want
Handsome
It Disturbs Me No More To Find Men Base, Unjust, Or Selfish Than To See Apes Mischievous, Wolves Savage, Or The Vulture Ravenous.
Selfish
Men
Apes
I Will Not Be Modest. Humble, As Much As You Like, But Not Modest. Modesty Is The Virtue Of The Lukewarm.
Humble
Modesty
Virtue
It's Quite An Undertaking To Start Loving Somebody. You Have To Have Energy, Generosity, Blindness. There Is Even A Moment Right At The Start Where You Have To Jump Across An Abyss: If You Think About It You Don't Do It.
Life
Thinking
Generosity
I Have No Need For Good Souls: An Accomplice Is What I Wanted.
Philosophical
Soul
Needs
The Coward Makes Himself Cowardly, The Hero Makes Himself Heroic.
Hero
Coward
Heroic
Intellectuals Cannot Be Good Revolutionaries; They Are Just Good Enough To Be Assassins.
Assassins
Revolutionary
Enough
The Absurd Man Will Not Commit Suicide; He Wants To Live, Without Relinquishing Any Of His Certainty, Without A Future, Without Hope, Without Illusions … And Without Resignation Either. He Stares At Death With Passionate Attention And This Fascination Liberates Him. He Experiences The “divine Irresponsibility” Of The Condemned Man.
Suicide
Men
Fascination
Because The Nazi Venom Worked Its Way Even Into Our Thoughts, Every Accurate Thought Was A Conquest; Because An All-powerful Police Sought To Force Us Into Silence Every Word Became As Precious As A Declaration Of Principle; Because We Were Persecuted, Each Of Our Gestures Carried The Weight Of A Commitment.
Powerful
Commitment
Silence
Several Hours Or Several Years Make No Difference Once You Have Lost Eternity.
Years
Differences
Hours
The Revolution You Dream Of Is Not Ours. You Don't Want To Change The World; You Want To Blow It Up.
Dream
Blow
World
This Desire [to Write] Is Rather Strange All The Same And Is Not Without A Certain "cracked" Quality.
Writing
Desire
Quality
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