Iselin Eik > Iselin's Quotes

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“All these objects... how can I explain? They inconvenienced me; I would have liked the to exist less strongly, more dryly, in a more abstract way, with more reserve.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“Perhaps it is impossible to understand one's own face. Or perhaps it is because I am a single man? People who live in society have learned how to see themselves in mirrors as they appear to their friends. I have no friends. Is that why my flesh is so naked?”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“My existence began to worry me seriously. Was I not a simple spectre?”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“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.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“I am. I am, I exist, I think, therefore I am; I am because I think, why do I think? I don't want to think any more, I am because I think that I don't want to be, I think that I . . . because . . . ugh!”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“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.”
― Jean Paul Sartre, Nausea

“What is there to fear in such a regular world?”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“Something is beginning in order to end: adventure does not let itself be drawn out; it only makes sense when dead. I am drawn, irrevocably, towards this death which is perhaps mine as well. Each instant appears only as part of a sequence. I cling to each instant with all my heart: I know that it is unique, irreplaceable -- and yet I would not raise a finger to stop it from being annihilated. This last moment I am spending -- in Berlin, in London -- in the arms of a woman casually met two days ago -- moment I love passionately, woman I may adore -- all is going to end, I know it. Soon I shall leave for another country. I shall never rediscover either this woman or this night. I grasp at each second, trying to suck it dry: nothing happens which I do not seize, which I do not fix forever in myself, nothing, neither the fugitive tenderness of those lovely eyes, nor the noises of the street, nor the false dawn of early morning: and even so the minute passes and I do not hold it back, I like to see it pass.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“My memories are like coins in the devil's purse: when you open it you find only dead leaves.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“We have so much difficulty imagining nothingness.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“I must wash myself clean with abstract thoughts, transparent as water.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“to do something is to create existence”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance. I leaned back and closed my eyes. But the images, forewarned, immediately leaped up and filled my closed eyes with existences: existence is a fullness which man can never abandon. Strange”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“I wish I were a giant gingko tree hundreds of years old, with the deep roots it takes to stand strong against mighty winds. Instead, I feel like a sapling in a typhoon, desperately trying to hang on.”
― Lisa See, Lady Tan’s Circle of Women