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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.

-Jean-Paul Sartre

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You Take Souls For

Jean-Paul Sartre

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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.

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More From Jean-Paul Sartre

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.

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.

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.

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.

When One Loves Animals And Children Too Much, One Loves Them Against Human Beings.

I Am Responsible For Everything... Except My Very Responsibility.

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

There Is No God

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

One Could Only Damage Oneself Through The Harm One Did To Others. One Could Never Get Directly At Oneself.

The Form [of Literature] Matters Little To Me, Classical Or Not.

Man Is What He Wills Himself To Be.

When Rich People Fight Wars With One Another, Poor People Are The Ones To Die.

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

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

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.

A Lost Battle Is A Battle One Thinks One Has Lost.

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.

Night Is Falling: At Dusk, You Must Have Good Eyesight To Be Able To Tell The Good Lord From The Devil.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

For The Moment, The Jazz Is Playing; There Is No Melody, Just Notes, A Myriad Tiny Tremors. The Notes Know No Rest, An Inflexibleorder Gives Birth To Them Then Destroys Them, Without Ever Leaving Them The Chance To Recuperate And Exist For Themselves.... I Would Like To Hole Them Back, But I Know That, If I Succeeded In Stooping One, There Would Only Remain In May Hand A Corrupt And Languishing Sound. I Must Accept Their Death; I Must Even Want That Death: I Know Of Few More Bitter Or Intense Impressions.

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

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

Be Quiet! Anyone Can Spit In My Face, And Call Me A Criminal And A Prostitute. But No One Has The Right To Judge My Remorse.

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.

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

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.

This Is What I Thought: For The Most Banal Even To Become An Adventure, You Must (and This Is Enough) Begin To Recount It. This Is What Fools People: A Man Is Always A Teller Of Tales, He Sees Everything That Happens To Him Through Them; And He Tries To Live His Own Life As If He Were Telling A Story. But You Have To Choose: Live Or Tell.

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

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.

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.

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

Nicias, Do You Think You Can Erase With Good Deeds The Wrongs You Committed Against Your Mother? What Good Deed Will Ever Reach Her? Her Soul Is A Scorching Noon Time, Without A Single Breath Of A Breeze, Nothing Moves, Nothing Changes, Nothing Lives There; A Great Emaciated Sun, An Immobile Sun Eternally Consumes Her.

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

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.

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.

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

There Is No Love Apart From The Deeds Of Love; No Potentiality Of Love Other Than That Which Is Manifested In Loving.

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.

I Do Not Understand! I Understand Nothing! I Cannot Understand Nor Do I Want To Understand! I Want To Believe! To Believe!

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.

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.

[contemporary Writer] Could Be A Kind Of [samuel] Beckett Who Would Not Be Felt To Be Totally Committed To Despair.

God Is Absence. God Is The Solitude Of Man.

Life Has No Meaning The Moment You Lose The Illusion Of Being Eternal.

Man Must Be Invented Each Day

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

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.

I Am Myself And I Am Here.

I Have No Need For Good Souls: An Accomplice Is What I Wanted.

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.

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

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

The Public, Too, Has To Make An Effort In Order To Understand The Writer Who, Though He Renounce Complacent Obscurity, Cannot Always Express His New-hidden Thoughts Lucidly And According To Accepted Models.

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

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

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

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

The Past Is The Luxury Of Proprietors.

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.

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

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

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.

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."

I Wanted Pure Love: Foolishness; To Love One Another Is To Hate A Common Enemy: I Will Thus Espouse Your Hatred. I Wanted Good: Nonsense; On This Earth And In These Times, Good And Bad Are Inseparable: I Accept To Be Evil In Order To Become Good.

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.

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

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

Two People Can Form A Community By Excluding A Third.

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

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

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.

Emotion Is First Of All And In Principle An Accident

My Eyes Feel All Soft, All Soft As Flesh. I'm Going To Sleep.

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

I Can Always Choose, But I Ought To Know That If I Do Not Choose, I Am Still Choosing.

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.

Un Homme N'est Rien D'autre Qu'une Se Rie D'entreprises. A Man Is No Other Than A Series Of Undertakings.

Time Is Too Large, It Can't Be Filled Up. Everything You Plunge Into It Is Stretched And Disintegrates.

The Recent Experiences Of Pocketbooks Prove This. I Have Changed My Public Since My Works Have Been Published In A Smaller Format.

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

Man Is Nothing Else But What He Makes Of Himself. [it Is A Matter Of Choice, Not Chance.] Such Is The First Principle Of Existentialism.

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

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.

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.

Once Freedom Lights Its Beacon In Man's Heart, The Gods Are Powerless Against Him.

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.

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.

Besides One Should Not Believe That The People Only Want Reading That Is Easy To Absorb.

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.

The Plight Of Modern Man Is That He Is Condemmed To Be Free.

I Distrust The Incommunicable; It Is The Source Of All Violence

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.

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

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.

What Is Life But An Unpleasant Interruption To A Peaceful Nonexistence.

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

This Then Is The Age Of Reason.

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

What I Regretted In La Nausee Was Not To Have Put Myself Completely Into The Thing. I Remained Outside My Hero's Disease, Protected By My Neurosis Which, Through Writing, Gave Me Happiness.

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

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

Philosophy Appears To Some People As A Homogenous Milieu: There Thoughts Are Born And Die, There Systems Are Built, And There, In Turn, They Collapse. Others Take Philosophy For A Specific Attitude Which We Can Freely Adopt At Will. Still Others See It As A Determined Segment Of Culture. In Our View Philosophy Does Not Exist.

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

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

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.

Is There Really Nothing, Nothing Left Of Me?

If You Are Lonely When You're Alone, You Are In Bad Company.

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

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

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

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.

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

Popular Literature

Existence Is An Imperfection.

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.

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

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.

When The Rich [and Politically Powerful] Make War, It's The Poor [and Politically Weak] Who Die.

I Hate Victims Who Respect Their Executioners.

Good Digestions, The Gray Monotony Of Provincial Life, And The Boredom-ah The Soul-destroying Boredom-of Long Days Of Mild Content.

Commitment Is An Act, Not A Word.

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

One Should Commit No Stupidity Twice, The Variety Of Choice Is, In The End, Large Enough.

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

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.

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

All I Want Is' - And He Uttered The Final Words Through Clenched Teeth And With A Sort Of Shame - 'to Retain My Freedom.' I Should Myself Have Thought,' Said Jacques, 'that Freedom Consisted In Frankly Confronting Situations Into Which One Had Deliberately Entered, And Accepting All One's Responsibilities. But That, No Doubt, Is Not Your View.

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 Fully Responsible For His Nature And His Choices.

The Worst Part About Being Lied To Is Knowing You Werent Worth The Truth

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

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

There It Is: I Am Gently Slipping Into The Water's Depths, Towards Fear.

Freedom Is Existence, And In It Existence Precedes Essence.

To Think New Thoughts You Have To Break The Bones In Your Head

Man's Existence Precedes His Essence

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

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.

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

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

We Make Our Own Hell Out Of The People Around Us.

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

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.

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

I Wanted My Own Words. But The Ones I Use Have Dragged Through I Don't Know How Many Consciences.

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

Better A Good Journalist Than A Poor Assassin.

Good Journalism

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

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

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

To Know What Life Is Worth You Have To Risk It Once In A While.

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

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.

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

Hell Is For Other People.

I Will Not Be Modest. Humble, As Much As You Like, But Not Modest. Modesty Is The Virtue Of The Lukewarm.

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.

To Eat Is To Appropriate By Destruction.

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.

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

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

Why Do You Keep Maintaining Your Ideas Are Right If You Can't Prove Them?

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.

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

Several Hours Or Several Years Make No Difference Once You Have Lost Eternity.

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.

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.

My Thought Is Me: That Is Why I Cannot Stop Thinking. I Exist Because I Think I Cannot Keep From Thinking.

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

Characteristics

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.

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.

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

She Suffers As A Miser. She Must Be Miserly With Her Pleasures, As Well. I Wonder If Sometimes She Doesn't Wish She Were Free Of This Monotonous Sorrow, Of These Mutterings Which Start As Soon As She Stops Singing, If She Doesn't Wish To Suffer Once And For All, To Drown Herself In Despair. In Any Case, It Would Be Impossible For Her: She Is Bound.

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

My Pessimism Has Never Been Flabby.

Every Word Has Consequences. Every Silence, Too.

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.

We Do Not Judge The People We Love.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

If You Die, I Will Lie Down Beside You And I Will Stay There Until The End, Without Eating Or Drinking, You Will Rot In My Arms And I Will Love You As Carcass: For You Love Nothing If You Do Not Love Everything.

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

Being Is. Being Is In-itself. Being Is What It Is.

Meaning Of Life

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.

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.

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