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Existence Is Not Something Which Lets Itself Be Thought Of Form A Distance; It Must Invade You Suddenly, Master You, Weigh Heavily On Your Heart Like A Great Motionless Beast - Or Else There Is Nothing At All.

-Jean-Paul Sartre

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Existence Is Not Something

Jean-Paul Sartre

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Existence Is Not Something Which Lets Itself Be Thought Of Form A Distance; It Must Invade You Suddenly, Master You, Weigh Heavily On Your Heart Like A Great Motionless Beast - Or Else There Is Nothing At All.

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You Must Be Afraid, My Son. That Is How One Becomes An Honest Citizen.

The Universe Remains Dark. We Are Animals Struck By Catastrophe.

The Appearance Of The Other In The World Corresponds Therefore To A Congealed Sliding Of The Whole Universe.

I Have Nothing But Contempt For You Idiotic Chosen Ones Who Have The Heart To Rejoice When There Are The Damned In Hell And The Poor On Earth; As For Me, I Am On The Side Of Men And I Will Not Leave It.

I Am Finishing A Biography Of [gustave] Flaubert. Because He Is The Opposite Of What I Am. One Needs To Rub Up Against Argument.

Man Is What He Wills Himself To Be.

Thus It Amounts To The Same Thing Whether One Gets Drunk Alone Or Is A Leader Of Nations.

What I Ask Of [the Writer] Is Not To Ignore The Reality And The Fundamental Problems That Exist. The World's Hunger, The Atomic Threat, The Alienation Of Man, I Am Astonished That They Do Not Color All Our Literature.

It Is No Longer Possible To Escape Men. Farewell To The Monsters, Farewell To The Saints. Farewell To Pride. All That Is Left Is Men.

For The Artist, The Color, The Bouquet, The Tinkling Of The Spoon On The Saucer, Are Things In The Highest Degree. He Stops At The Quality Of The Sound Or The Form. He Returns To It Constantly And Is Enchanted With It.

A Man Is Always A Teller Of Tales, He Lives Surrounded By His Stories And The Stories Of Others, He Sees Everything That Happens To Him Through Them; And He Tries To Live His Life As If He Were Recounting It.

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.

That’s What Existence Means: Draining One’s Own Self Dry Without The Sense Of Thirst.

Either The Ussr Was Not The Country Of Socialism, In Which Case Socialism Didn't Exist Anywhere And Doubtless, Wasn't Possible: Or Else, Socialism Was That, This Abominable Monster, This Police State, The Power Of Beasts Of Prey.

To Believe Is To Know You Believe, And To Know You Believe Is Not To Believe.

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.

There Is A Universe Behind And Before Him. And The Day Is Approaching When Closing The Last Book On The Last Shelf On The Far Left; He Will Say To Himself, "now What?

I Am Not Asking For Sensational Revelations, But I Would Like To Sense The Meaning Of That Minute, To Feel It's Urgency.

For Forty Years I Was Conscripted By The Absolute, The Neurosis. The Absolute Is Gone. There Remain Countless Tasks Among Which Literature Is In No Way Privileged.

All The Same, They [books] Do Serve Some Purpose. Culture Doesn't Save Anything Or Anyone, It Doesn't Justify. But It's A Product Of Man: He Projects Himself Into It, He Recognizes Himself In It; That Critical Mirror Alone Offers Him His Image.

Handing Over A Bank Note Is Enough To Make A Bicycle Belong To Me, But My Entire Life Is Needed To Realize This Possession.

It's Just What People Do When They're Getting Old, When They're Sick Of Themselves And Their Life; They Think Of Money And Take Care Of Themselves.

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.

[andre] Gide Can Say It To Me: It Is A Writer's Morality Only Addressed To A Few Privileged People. For That Reason It No Longer Interests Me.

Do You Think I Can Read [alain] Robbe-grillet In An Underdeveloped Country? He Does Not Feel Himself Maimed.

I Believe, I Desire, That Social And Economic Ills May Be Remedied.

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.

It Was Odd, He Thought, That A Man Could Hate Himself As Though He Were Someone Else.

But For Me There Is Neither Monday Nor Sunday: There Are Days Which Pass In Disorder, And Then, Sudden Lightning Like This One. Nothing Has Changed And Yet Everything Is Different. I Can't Describe It, It's Like The Nausea And Yet It's Just The Opposite: At Last An Adventure Happens To Me And When I Question Myself I See That It Happens That I Am Myself And That I Am Here; I Am The One Who Splits In The Night, I Am As Happy As The Hero Of A Novel.

Intellectuals Cannot Be Good Revolutionaries; They Are Just Good Enough To Be Assassins.

How Can I, Who Was Not Able To Retain My Own Past, Hope To Save That Of Another?

God Is Absence. God Is The Solitude Of Man.

A Man Who Is Free Is Like A Mangy Sheep In A Herd. He Will Contaminate My Entire Kingdom And Ruin My Work.

I Should Wish [alain Robbe-grillet] To Realize That Guinea Exists.

Freedom Is What You Do With What's Been Done To You.

Men Equally Honest, Equally Devoted To Their Fatherland, Are Momentarily Separated By Different Conceptions Of Their Duty.

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.

I Never Could Bear The Idea Of Anyone's Expecting Something From Me. It Always Made Me Want To Do Just The Opposite.

Expecting Something

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.

I Have Seen Children Dying Of Hunger. Over Against A Dying Child La Nausee Cannot Act As A Counterweight.

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.

When One Does Nothing, One Believes Oneself Responsible For Everything.

It Is Better; Heavier, Crueler. The Mouth You Wear For Hell.

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.

If I Did Not Publish This Autobiography [les Mots] Sooner And In Its Most Radical Form, It Is Because I Considered It Exaggerated.

I Had Found My Religion: Nothing Seemed More Important To Me Than A Book. I Saw The Library As A Temple.

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.

At That Time [1954], As A Result Of Political Events, I Was Deeply Preoccupied By My Relations With The Communist Party.

When We Love Animals And Children Too Much, We Love Them At The Expense Of Men.

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.

You Must Be Like Me; You Must Suffer In Rhythm.

As Long As The Writer Cannot Write For The Two Billion Men Who Are Hungry, He Will Be Oppressed By A Feeling Of Malaise.

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.

When She Is Alone In The Rooms I Hear Her Humming To Keep Herself From Thinking.

I Exist, That Is All, And I Find It Nauseating.

With A Little Luck That Epoch May Arrive. I Am On The Side Of Those Who Think That Things Will Go Better When The World Has Changed.

Violence Is Good For Those Who Have Nothing To Lose.

Nothing To Lose

We Do Not Know What We Want And Yet We Are Responsible For What We Are - That Is The Fact.

There Is Only One Day Left, Always Starting Over: It Is Given To Us At Dawn And Taken Away From Us At Dusk.

Everything Comes To Us From Others. To Be Is To Belong To Someone.

Three O'clock Is Always Too Late Or Too Early For Anything You Want To Do.

To Read A Poem In January Is As Lovely As To Go For A Walk In June

Perhaps Its Inevitable, Perhaps One Has To Choose Between Being Nothing At All And Impersonating What One Is.

That God Does Not Exist, I Cannot Deny, That My Whole Being Cries Out For God I Cannot Forget.

It Is Not Right, My Fellow-countrymen, You Who Know Very Well All The Crimes Committed In Our Name. It's Not At All Right That You Do Not Breathe A Word About Them To Anyone, Not Even To Your Own Soul, For Fear Of Having To Stand In Judgment Of Yourself. I Am Willing To Believe That At The Beginning You Did Not Realize What Was Happening; Later, You Doubted Whether Such Things Could Be True; But Now You Know, And Still You Hold Your Tongues.

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.

To Keep Hope Alive One Must, In Spite Of All Mistakes, Horrors, And Crimes, Recognize The Obvious Superiority Of The Socialist Camp.

In Les Mots I Explain The Origin Of My Madness, Of My Neurosis. This Analysis May Help The Young Who Dream Of Writing.

The Individual's Duty Is To Do What He Wants To Do, To Think Whatever He Likes, To Be Accountable To No One But Himself, To Challenge Every Idea And Every Person.

Some Men Are Born Committed To Action: They Do Not Have A Choice, They Have Been Thrown On A Path, At The End Of That Path, An Act Awaits Them, Their Act.

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.

One Can Ask Why The I Has To Appear In The Cogito {descartes’ Argument “i Think Therefore I Am.}, Since The Cogito, If Used Rightly, Is The Awareness Of Pure Consciousness, Not Directed At Any Fact Or Action. In Fact The I Is Not Necessary Here, Since It Is Never United Directly To Consciousness. One Can Even Imagine A Pure And Self-aware Consciousness Which Thinks Of Itself As Impersonal Spontaneity.

The [communist] Party Has One Objective: The Creation Of A Socialist Economy; And One Means: The Utilization Of The Class Struggle.

Don't You Feel The Same Way? When I Cannot See Myself, Even Though I Touch Myself, I Wonder If I Really Exist.

Il N'y A De Réalité Que Dans L'action. (there Is No Reality Except In Action.)

You Know How Much I Admire Che Guevara. In Fact, I Believe That The Man Was Not Only An Intellectual But Also The Most Complete Human Being Of Our Age: As A Fighter And As A Man, As A Theoretician Who Was Able To Further The Cause Of Revolution By Drawing His Theories From His Personal Experience In Battle.

A Pale Reflection Of Myself Wavers In My Consciousness...and Suddenly The “i” Pales, Pales, And Fades Out.

What Do I Care About Jupiter? Justice Is A Human Issue, And I Do Not Need A God To Teach It To Me.

Better To Have Beasts That Let Themselves Be Killed Than Men Who Run Away.

As Far As Men Go, It Is Not What They Are That Interests Me, But What They Can Become.

Once You Hear The Details Of Victory, It Is Hard To Distinguish It From A Defeat.

Death Is A Continuation Of My Life Without Me.

I Committed The First Crime By Creating Men As Mortals. After That, What More Could You Do, You The Murderers? Come On; They Already Had Death In Them: At Most You Simply Hastened Things A Little.

It Would Be Much Better If I Could Only Stop Thinking. Thoughts Are The Dullest Things. Duller Than Flesh. They Stretch Out And There's No End To Them And They Leave A Funny Taste In The Mouth. Then There Are Words, Inside The Thoughts, Unfinished Words, A Sketchy Sentence Which Constantly Returns...it Goes, It Goes ... And There's No End To It. It's Worse Than The Rest Because I Feel Responsible And Have Complicity In It. For Example, This Sort Of Painful Rumination: I Exist, I Am The One Who Keeps It Up. I.

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.

What's Done At Night Belongs To The Night. In The Daytime You Don't Talk About It.

Words Are Loaded Pistols.

Thought Provoking

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.

Politics Is A Science. You Can Demonstrate That You Are Right And That Others Are Wrong.

All Human Actions Are Equivalent... And All Are On Principle Doomed To Failure.

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.

Emotion Is First Of All And In Principle An Accident

One Does Not Adopt A New Idea, One Slips Into It.

It Is Too Early To Love. We Will Buy The Right To Do So By Shedding Blood.

The Best Work Is Not What Is Most Difficult For You; It Is What You Do Best.

So It Comes To This; One Doesn’t Need Rest. Why Bother About Sleep If One Isn’t Sleepy? That Stands To Reason, Doesn’t It? Wait A Minute, There’s A Snag Somewhere; Something Disagreeable. Why, Now, Should It Be Disagreeable? …ah, I See; It’s Life Without A Break.

Hell Is For Other People.

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.

Ah! How I Hate The Crimes Of The New Generation: They Are Dry And Sterile As Darnel.

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.

All I Can Do Is Make The Best Of What I Am, Become Accustomed To It, Evaluate The Possibilities, And Take Advantage Of Them The Best I Can.

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.

[m]an Is Condemned To Be Free. Condemned, Because He Did Not Create Himself, In Other Respect 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.

What Is Not Possible Is Not To Choose.

This [service To Oppressed] Is The Writer's Task, And, If He Fulfills It As He Should, He Acquires No Merit From It.

Criminals Together. We're In Hell, My Little Friend, And There's Never Any Mistake There. People Are Not Damned For Nothing.

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.

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.

Fascism Is Not Defined By The Number Of Its Victims, But By The Way It Kills Them.

We Only Become What We Are By The Radical And Deep-seated Refusal Of That Which Others Have Made Of Us.

He Loves Me, He Doesn't Love My Bowels, If They Showed Him My Appendix In A Glass He Wouldn't Recognize It, He's Always Feeling Me, But If They Put The Glass In His Hands He Wouldn't Touch It, He Wouldn't Think, "that's Hers," You Ought To Love All Of Somebody, The Esophagus, The Liver, The Intestines. Maybe We Don't Love Them Because We Aren't Used To Them, But If We Saw Them The Way We Saw Our Hands And Arms Maybe We'd Love Them; The Starfish Must Love Each Other Better Than We Do.

But [your Crime] Will Be There, One Hundred Times Denied, Always There, Dragging Itself Behind You. Then You Will Finally Know That You Have Committed Your Life With One Throw Of The Die, Once And For All, And There Is Nothing You Can Do But Tug Our Crime Along Until Your Death. Such Is The Law, Just And Unjust, Of Repentance. Then We Will See What Will Become Of Your Young Pride.

Existence Is Prior To Essence.

Because We Can Imagine, We Are Free.

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.

I Don't Know. Everything. Living. Smoking.

I Am Not Recommending "popular" Literature Which Aims At The Lowest.

Popular Literature

One Of The Chief Motives Of Artistic Creation Is Certainly The Need Of Feeling That We Are Essential In Relationship To The World.

To Whomever Gives A Kiss Or A Blow Render A Kiss Or Blow But To Whomever Gives When You Are Unable To Return Offer All The Hatred In Your Heart For You Were Slaves And He Enslaves You

I Entered The Communist Party Because Its Cause Was Just And I Will Leave It When It Ceases To Be Just.

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.

Existence Of Life

Little Flashes Of Sun On The Surface Of A Cold, Dark Sea.

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?

Uncalled-for Aggression Arouses The Hatred Of The Civilian Population.

Only The Guy Who Isn't Rowing Has Time To Rock The Boat.

Man Is Abandoned On Earth In The Midst Of His Infinite Responsibilities, Without Help, With No Aim But What He Sets Himself.

Smooth And Smiling Faces Everywhere, But Ruin In Their Eyes.

For The Time Being I Have Seen Enough Of Living Things, Of Dogs, Of Men, Of All Flabby Masses Which Move Spontaneously.

Everything Has Been Figured Out, Except How To Live.

When I Can't See Myself In The Mirror, I Can't Even Feel Myself, And I Begin To Wonder If I Exist At All.

The Sun Is Not Ridiculous, Quite The Contrary. On Everything I Like, On The Rust Of The Construction Girders, On The Rotten Boards Of The Fence, A Miserly, Uncertain Light Falls, Like The Look You Give, After A Sleepless Night, On Decisions Made With Enthusiasm The Day Before, On Pages You Have Written In One Spurt Without Crossing Out A Word.

Torture Is Senseless Violence, Born In Fear... Torture Costs Human Lives But Does Not Save Them. We Would Almost Be Too Lucky If These Crimes Were The Work Of Savages: The Truth Is That Torture Makes Torturers.

That Of War And Peace Or Of Almagestes. All Are Satisfactory. The Only Criterion Of A Work Is Its Validity: That It Should Grip And That It Should Last.

I Do Not Believe In God; His Existence Has Been Disproved By Science. But In The Concentration Camp, I Learned To Believe In Men.

This Is The Basis For The Joy Of Love When There Is Joy; We Feel That Our Existence Is Justified.

I Respect Orders But I Respect Myself Too And I Do Not Obey Foolish Rules Made Especially To Humiliate Me.

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.

You Are -- Your Life, And Nothing Else.

Happiness Has To Be Installed In Each Person As A State Of Affairs Completely Cut Off From The Process That Brought It About And, In Particular, From The Real Situation. Man Has To Be Affected With Happiness. It Is A Tonality Given To Him. Contradiction: If One Does Take Care To Give Him Happiness, It Is Because He Is A Free Creature--but In Order To Give It To Him, One Turns Him Into An Object.

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.

Every Existing Thing Is Born Without Reason, Prolongs Itself Out Of Weakness, And Dies By Chance.

The Characteristic Of Every Neurosis Is To Represent Itself As Natural.

Characteristics

Lord, You Have Cursed Cain And Cain’s Children: Thy Will Be Done. You Have Allowed Men’s Hearts To Be Corrupted, That Their Intentions Be Rotten, That Their Actions Putrefy And Stink: Thy Will Be Done.

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.

Imagination Is Not An Empirical Or Superadded Power Of Consciousness, It Is The Whole Of Consciousness As It Realizes Its Freedom.

[stéphane Mallarmé] Theory Of The Hermetic Is A Mistake, But He Can Be Only Difficult To Read When He Has Difficult Things To Say.

For Common Minds Have An Ugly Ability To Perceive In The Deepest And Richest Saying Nothing But Their Own Everyday Opinion.

What Never Vary Are The Necessities Of Being In The World, Of Having To Labor And To Die There.

Understand Me: I Wish To Be A Man From Somewhere, A Man Among Men. You See, A Slave, When He Passes By, Weary And Surly, Carrying A Heavy Load, Limping Along And Looking Down At His Feet, Only At His Feet To Avoid Falling Down; He Is In His Town, Like A Leaf In Greenery, Like A Tree In A Forest, Argos Surrounds Him, Heavy And Warm, Full Of Herself; I Want To Be That Slave, Electra, I Want To Pull The City Around Me And To Roll Myself Up In It Like A Blanket. I Will Not Leave.

Commitment Is An Act, Not A Word.

What I Lacked [in La Nausee] Was A Sense Of Reality. I Have Changed Since. I Have Slowly Learned To Experience Reality.

For An Occurrence To Become An Adventure, It Is Necessary And Sufficient For One To Recount It.

There Is No Human Nature, Since There Is No God To Conceive It.

There Is No God

The Real Nature Of The Present Revealed Itself: It Was What Exists, All That Was Not Present Did Not Exist.

If Literature Isn't Everything, It's Not Worth A Single Hour Of Someone's Trouble.

If You Want To Deserve Hell, You Need Only Stay In Bed. The World Is Iniquity; If You Accept It, You Are An Accomplice, If You Change It You Are An Executioner.

Once Liberty Has Exploded In The Soul Of A Man, The Gods Can Do Nothing Against That Man.

I Will Take It All: Tongs, Molten Lead, Prongs, Garrotes, All That Burns, All That Tears, I Want To Truly Suffer. Better One Hundred Bites, Better The Whip, Vitriol, Than This Suffering In The Head, This Ghost Of Suffering Which Grazes And Caresses And Never Hurts Enough.

To Love Is Never Just To Love Since It Is Also To Will To Love, And ... To Love In Spite Of Oneself, To Allow Oneself To Be Overcome By One's Love.

Ideas Come In Pairs And They Contradict One Another; Their Opposition Is The Principal Engine Of Reflection.

Words Are More Treacherous And Powerful Than We Think.

We Cannot Withdraw Our Cards From The Game. Were We As Silent And Mute As Stones, Our Very Passivity Would Be An Act.

Ah! Yes, I Know: Those Who See Me Rarely Trust My Word: I Must Look Too Intelligent To Keep It.

If You Begin By Saying, 'thou Shalt Not Lie,' There Is No Longer Any Possibility Of Political Action.

The Painful Secret Of Gods And Kings Is That Men Are Free, Aegistheus. You Know It And They Do Not.

What Is Meant Here By Saying That Existence Precedes Essence? It Means First Of All, Man Exists, Turns Up, Appears On The Scene, And, Only Afterwards, Defines Himself. If Man, As The Existentialist Conceives Him, Is Indefinable, It Is Because At First He Is Nothing. Only Afterward Will He Be Something, And He Himself Will Have Made What He Will Be.

Like All Dreamers, I Mistook Disenchantment For Truth.

Man Can Will Nothing Unless He Has First Understood That He Must Count On No One But Himself.

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.

Philosophy Which Does Not Help To Illuminate The Process Of The Liberation Of The Oppressed Should Be Rejected.

So Long As One Believes In God, One Has The Right To Do The Good In Order To Be Moral.

I Have No Religion, But If I Were To Choose One, It Would Be That Of Shariati's.

In Football Everything Is Complicated By The Presence Of The Opposite Team.

It Is The Same: A Chosen One Is A Man Whom God's Finger Crushes Against The Wall.

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.

I Do Not Feel That I Am The Product Of Chance, A Speck Of Dust In The Universe, But Someone Who Was Expected, Prepared, Prefigured. In Short, A Being Whom Only A Creator Could Put Here; And This Idea Of A Creating Hand Refers To God.

Life Begins On The Other Side Of Despair.

I Am Neither Virgin Nor Priest Enough To Play With The Inner Life.

If You Seek Authenticity For Authenticity's Sake You Are No Longer Authentic.

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.

The Lad Who Dreams Of Being A Boxing Champion Or An Admiral Chooses Reality. If The Writer Chooses The Imaginary, He Confuses The Two.

Things Are Entirely What They Appear To Be And Behind Them... There Is Nothing.

We Are Our Choices.

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.

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.

Evil Is The Product Of The Ability Of Humans To Make Abstract That Which Is Concrete.

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.

What Is Boredom? It Is When There Is Simultaneously Too Much And Not Enough.

The World Would Get Along Very Well Without Literature. It Would Get Along Even Better Without Man.

I Exist. It's Sweet, So Sweet, So Slow. And Light: You'd Think It Floated All By Itself. It Stirs. It Brushes By Me, Melts And Vanishes. Gently, Gently. There Is Bubbling Water In My Mouth. I Swallow. It Slides Down My Throat, It Caresses Me — And Now It Comes Up Again Into My Mouth. For Ever I Shall Have A Little Pool Of Whitish Water In My Mouth - Lying Low - Grazing My Tongue. And This Pool Is Still Me. And The Tongue. And The Throat Is Me.

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.

Nothingness Lies Coiled In The Heart Of Being - Like A Worm.

Originally, Poetry Creates The Myth, While The Prose-writer Draws Its Portrait.

When The Rich Wage War, It's The Poor Who Die.

[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.

What The Painter Adds To The Canvas Are The Days Of His Life. The Adventure Of Living, Hurtling Toward Death.

Man Is Fully Responsible For His Nature And His Choices.

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.

Every Word Has Consequences. Every Silence, Too.

It Is Therefore Senseless To Think Of Complaining Since Nothing Foreign Has Decided What We Feel, What We Live, Or What We Are.

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Hillary Clinton

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