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There Were Days When You Peered Into Yourself, Into The Secret Places Of Your Heart, And What You Saw There Made You Faint With Horror. And Then, Next Day, You Didn't Know What To Make Of It,you Couldn't Interpret The Horror You Had Glimpsed The Day Before. Yes, You Know What Evil Costs.

-Jean-Paul Sartre

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There Were Days When

Jean-Paul Sartre

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There Were Days When You Peered Into Yourself, Into The Secret Places Of Your Heart, And What You Saw There Made You Faint With Horror. And Then, Next Day, You Didn't Know What To Make Of It,you Couldn't Interpret The Horror You Had Glimpsed The Day Before. Yes, You Know What Evil Costs.

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Absurd, Irreducible; Nothing — Not Even A Profound And Secret Delirium Of Nature — Could Explain It. Obviously I Did Not Know Everything, I Had Not Seen The Seeds Sprout, Or The Tree Grow. But Faced With This Great Wrinkled Paw, Neither Ignorance Nor Knowledge Was Important: The World Of Explanations And Reasons Is Not The World Of Existence. A Circle Is Not Absurd, It Is Clearly Explained By The Rotation Of A Straight Segment Around One Of Its Extremities. But Neither Does A Circle Exist. This Root, On The Other Hand, Existed In Such A Way That I Could Not Explain It.

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

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.

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.

The Viable Jewels Of Life Remain Untouched When Man Forgets His Vocation Of Searching For The Truth Of His Existence.

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

We Do Not Judge The People We Love.

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

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.

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.

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

As For Me, I Am Mean: That Means That I Need The Suffering Of Others To Exist. A Flame. A Flame In Their Hearts. When I Am All Alone, I Am Extinguished.

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

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.

L'homme Est Une Passion Inutile. Man Is A Useless Passion.

You Are -- Your Life, And Nothing Else.

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.

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

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.

I Said To Myself, 'i Want To Die Decently'.

Man Is The Being Whose Project It Is To Be God.

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

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

I Was Escaping From Nature And At Last Becoming Myself, That Other Whom I Was Aspiring To Be In The Eyes Of Others.

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.

Fear? If I Have Gained Anything By Damning Myself, It Is That I No Longer Have Anything To Fear.

A Man Is Involved In Life, Leaves His Impress On It, And Outside Of That There Is Nothing.

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

As If There Could Be True Stories: Things Happen In One Way, And We Retell Them In The Opposite Way.

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

We Are Possessed By The Things We Possess. When I Like An Object, I Always Give It To Someone. It Isn't Generosity-it's Only Because I Want Others To Be Enslaved By Objects, Not Me.

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.

Sometimes The Truth Is Too Simple For Intellectuals.

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

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

Who Can Exhaust A Man? Who Knows A Man's Resources?

[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.

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

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

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

A Writer Must Refuse To Allow Himself To Be Transformed Into An Institution.

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.

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

Acting Is Happy Agony.

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.

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

In A Country Lacking Leaders, In Africa, For Instance, How Could A Native Educated In Europe Refuse To Become A Professor, Even At The Price Of His Literary Vocation?

I Maintain That Inversion Is The Effect Of Neither A Prenatal Choice Nor An Endocrinal Malformation Nor Even The Passive And Determined Result Of Complexes. It Is An Outlet That A Child Discovers When He Is Suffocating.

Is There Really Nothing, Nothing Left Of Me?

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

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

Popular Literature

Heroism Is Not To Be Won At The Point Of A Pen.

Existence Precedes And Rules Essence.

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.

No Finite Point Has Meaning Without An Infinite Reference Point.

I Have Changed As Everyone Changes: Within A Permanency.

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.

Man's Existence Precedes His Essence

In The Nineteenth Century One Had To Give All Sorts Of Guarantees And Lead An Exemplary Life In Order To Cleanse Oneself In The Eyes Of The Bourgeois Of The Sin Of Writing, For Literature Is, In Essence, Heresy. The Situation Has Not Changed Except That It Is Now The Communists, That Is, The Qualified Representatives Of The Proletariat, Who As A Matter Of Principle Regard The Writer As Suspect.

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.

Objects Should Not Touch Because They Are Not Alive. You Use Them, Put Them Back In Place, You Live Among Them: They Are Useful, Nothing More. But They Touch Me, It Is Unbearable. I Am Afraid Of Being In Contact With Them As Though They Were Living Beasts.

Through The Lack Of Attaching Myself To Words, My Thoughts Remain Nebulous Most Of The Time. They Sketch Vague, Pleasant Shapes And Then Are Swallowed Up; I Forget Them Almost Immediately.

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

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.

In Guinea I Could Read [franz] Kafka. I Re-discover In Him My Own Discomfort.

I Am Not Virtuous. Our Sons Will Be If We Shed Enough Blood To Give Them The Right To Be.

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.

You See, I'm Fond Of Teasing, It's A Second Nature With Me—and I'm Used To Teasing Myself. Plaguing Myself, If You Prefer; I Don't Tease Nicely.

Then I Realized What Separated Us: What I Thought About Him Could Not Reach Him; It Was Psychology, The Kind They Write About In Books. But His Judgment Went Through Me Like A Sword And Questioned My Very Right To Exist. And It Was True, I Had Always Realized It; I Hadn't The Right To Exist. I Had Appeared By Chance, I Existed Like A Stone, A Plant Or A Microbe. My Life Put Out Feelers Towards Small Pleasures In Every Direction. Sometimes It Sent Out Vague Signals; At Other Times I Felt Nothing More Than A Harmless Buzzing.

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.

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

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.

When You Live Alone You No Longer Know What It Is To Tell A Story: The Plausible Disappears At The Same Time As The Friends. You Let Events Flow By Too: You Suddenly See People Appear Who Speak And Then Go Away; You Plunge Into Stories Of Which You Can't Make Head Or Tail: You'd Make A Terrible Witness.

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.

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

I Can Receive Nothing More From These Tragic Solitudes Than A Little Empty Purity.

That Is Exactly The Writer's Problem. What Does Literature Stand For In A Hungry World?

Once We Know And Are Aware, We Are Responsible For Our Action And Our Inaction. We Can Do Something About It Or Ignore It. Either Way, We Are Still Responsible.

Life Gave Me Everything I Asked If All I Asked Was Not A Great Deal, That's My Problem!

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.

All-powerful God, Who Am I But The Fear That I Inspire In Others?

In Order To Make Myself Recognized By The Other, I Must Risk My Own Life. To Risk One's Life, In Fact, Is To Reveal Oneself As Not-bound To The Objective Form Or To Any Determined Existence — As Not-bound To Life.

It Is Enough That One Man Hate Another For Hate To Gain, Little By Little, All Mankind.

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

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 Addition.

I Am Myself And I Am Here.

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.

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

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.

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.

You See, The Contemporary Writer Must Write Through His Intimations Of Unease, While Trying To Elucidate Them.

God Is The Solitude Of Men. There Was Only Me: I Alone Decided To Commit Evil; Alone, I Invented Good. I Am The One Who Cheated, I Am The One Who Performed Miracles, I Am The One Accusing Myself Today, I Alone Can Absolve Myself; Me, The Man.

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.

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.

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

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

The Revolution You Dream Of Is Not Ours. You Don't Want To Change The World; You Want To Blow It Up.

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

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

Genius Is What A Man Invents When He Is Looking For A Way Out.

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.

Better A Good Journalist Than A Poor Assassin.

Good Journalism

The For-itself, In Fact, Is Nothing But The Pure Nihilation Of The In-itself; It Is Like A Hole Of Being At The Heart Of Being.

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

In Life Man Commits Himself And Draws His Own Portrait, Outside Of Which There Is Nothing. No Doubt This Thought May Seem Harsh To Someone Who Has Not Made A Success Of His Life. But On The Other Hand, It Helps People To Understand That Reality Alone Counts, And That Dreams, Expectations And Hopes Only Serve To Define A Man As A Broken Dream, Aborted Hopes, And Futile Expectations.

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 Is Absence. God Is The Solitude Of Man.

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

First All Men Must Be Able To Become Men By The Improvement Of Their Conditions Of Existence, So That A Universal Morality Can Be Created. If I Begin By Saying To Them: "thou Shalt Not Lie," There Is No Longer Any Possibility Of Political Action. What Matters First Is The Liberation Of Man.

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.

To Choose This Or That Is To Affirm At The Same Time The Value Of What We Choose, Because We Can Never Choose Evil. We Always Choose The Good, And Nothing Can Be Good For Us Without Being Good For All.

Ah! Do Not Judge The Gods, Young Man, They Have Painful Secrets.

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.

Absurd, Irreducible; Nothing--not Even A Profound And Secret Delirium Of Nature--could Explain [a Tree Root].

Acting Is A Question Of Absorbing Other People's Personalities And Adding Some Of Your Own Experience.

She Believed In Nothing; Only Her Skepticism Kept Her From Being An Atheist.

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

The Coward Makes Himself Cowardly, The Hero Makes Himself Heroic.

What Is Not Possible Is Not To Choose.

Life Is A Useless Passion.

I Felt Myself In A Solitude So Frightful That I Contemplated Suicide. What Held Me Back Was The Idea That No One, Absolutely No One, Would Be Moved By My Death, That I Would Be Even More Alone In Death Than In Life.

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.

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.

A Madman's Ravings Are Absurd In Relation To The Situation In Which He Finds Himself, But Not In Relation To His Madness.

What Then Did You Expect When You Unbound The Gag That Muted Those Black Mouths? That They Would Chant Your Praises? Did You Think That When Those Heads That Our Fathers Had Forcibly Bowed Down To The Ground Were Raised Again, You Would Find Adoration In Their Eyes?

I Think That Is The Big Danger In Keeping A Diary: You Exaggerate Everything.

All That I Know About My Life, It Seems, I Have Learned In Books.

Words Are Loaded Pistols.

Thought Provoking

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.

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

I Have Always Been An Optimist, Perhaps Even Too Much.

Every Human Endeavor, However Singular It Seems, Involves The Whole Human Race.

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.

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

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.

[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.

Something Begins In Order To End: An Adventure Doesn't Let Itself Be Extended It Achieves Significance Only Through Its Death.

He Is Always Becoming, And If It Were Not For The Contingency Of Death, He Would Never End.

To Choose Not To Choose Is Still To Act.

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

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.

I Tell You In Truth: All Men Are Prophets Or Else God Does Not Exist.

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.

Words Are More Treacherous And Powerful Than We Think.

Thrown Into The Atmosphere Of Action [in 1954], I Suddenly Understood The Kind Of Neurosis That Dominated All My Previous Work. I Had Not Been Able To Recognize It Before: I Was Inside. Simone De Beauvoir Had Guessed These Reasons Before I Did.

There Is No Book Of Mine That I Reject. That Does Not Mean That I Find Them Good.

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

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.

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.

A Good Hanging Now And Then -- That Entertains Folk In The Provinces And Robs Death Of Its Glamour.

I Exist. It Is Soft, So Soft, So Slow. And Light: It Seems As Though It Suspends In The Air. It Moves.

A Writer Who Takes Political, Social Or Literary Positions Must Act Only With The Means That Are His. These Means Are The Written Words.

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.

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

This Then Is The Age Of Reason.

Because We Can Imagine, We Are Free.

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.

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

Yes, I Am So Free. And What A Superb Absence Is My Soul.

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.

What I See Is Teeming Cohesion, Contained Dispersal... For Him, To Sculpt Is To Take The Fat Off Space.

Atheism Is A Cruel Long Term Business, And I Have Gone Through It To The End.

I Do Not Give A Damn About The Dead. They Died For The [communist] Party And The Party Can Decide What It Wants. I Practice A Live Man's Politics, For The Living.

Everything That Exists Is Born For No Reason, Carries On Living Through Weakness, And Dies By Accident

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.

My Thought Is Me: That's Why I Can't Stop. 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. I Am The One Who Pulls Myself From The Nothingness To Which I Aspire.

We Must Act Out Passion Before We Can Feel It.

A Writer Must Refuse To Allow Himself To Be Transformed Into An Institution, Even If It Takes Place In The Most Honorable Form.

Man Is Condemned To Be Free; Because Once Thrown Into The World, He Is Responsible For Everything He Does.

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

We Will Not Go To Heaven,goetz, And Even If We Both Entered It, We Would Not Have Eyes To See Each Other, Nor Hands To Touch Each Other. Up There, God Gets All The Attention.... We Can Only Love On This Earth And Against God.

I Had Spent My Time Counterfeiting Eternity.

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

It Is Certain That We Cannot Escape Anguish, For We Are Anguish.

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.

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

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

I Think [alain Robbe-grillet] A Good Writer, But He Speaks To The Comfortable Bourgeoisie.

Remember, Orestes: You Were Part Of My Herd, You Grazed In The Fields Along With My Sheep. Your Liberty Is Nothing But A Mange Eating Away At You, It Is Nothing But An Exile.

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.

It Is Not A Matter Of Indifference Whether We Like Oysters Or Clams, Snails Or Shrimp, If Only We Know How To Unravel The Existential Significance Of These Foods.

I Know Only One Church: It Is The Society Of Men.

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.

But I Must Finally Realize That I Am Subject To These Sudden Transformations. The Thing Is That I Rarely Think; A Crowd Of Small Metamorphoses Accumulate In Me Without My Noticing It, And Then, One Fine Day, A Veritable Revolution Takes Place.

One Cannot Become A Saint When One Works Sixteen Hours A Day.

Existence Is An Imperfection.

Nothingness Haunts Being.

Respectable Society Believed In God In Order To Avoid Having To Speak About Him.

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

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

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.

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.

Man Can Will Nothing Unless He Has First Understood That He Must Count On No One But Himself; That He Is Alone, Abandoned On Earth In The Midst Of His Infinite Responsibilities, Without Help, With No Other Aim Than The One He Sets Himself, With No Other Destiny Than The One He Forges For Himself On This Earth.

Freedom Is Existence, And In It Existence Precedes Essence.

Your Judgement Judges You And Defines You

I’ve Dropped Out Of Their Hearts Like A Little Sparrow Fallen From Its Nest. So Gather Me Up, Dear, Fold Me To Your Heart – And You’ll See How Nice I Can Be.

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.

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.

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.

Like All Dreamers, I Mistook Disenchantment For Truth.

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Augustine Birrell

Richard Linklater

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