Sheller T > T's Quotes

“Genius is what a man invents when he is looking for a way out.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“I met your father last week. Are you still interested in hearing how he is doing?
Hugo: No.
Karsky: It is very probable that you will be responsible for his death.
Hugo: It is virtually certain that he is responsible for my life. We are even.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Les Mains sales

“Reflection poisons desire.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist Theory of Consciousness

“Once Right has taken hold of a man exorcism cannot drive it out.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“I am free,’ he said suddenly. And his joy changed, on the spot, to a crushing sense of anguish.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, The Reprieve

“know very well that I don’t want to do anything: to do something is to create existence—and there’s quite enough existence as it is.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“I go, I go away, I walk, I wander, and everywhere I go I bear my shell with me, I remain at home in my room, among my books, I do not approach an inch nearer to Marrakech or Timbuktu. Even if I took a train, a boat, or a motor-bus, if I went to Morocco for my holiday, if I suddenly arrived at Marrakech, I should be always in my room, at home. And if I walked in the squares and in the sooks, if I gripped an Arab's shoulder, to feel Marrakech in his person - well, that Arab would be at Marrakech, not I : I should still be seated in my room, placid and meditative as is my chosen life, two thousand miles away from the Moroccan and his burnoose. In my room. Forever.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, The Age of Reason

“You are what you are not and are not what you are.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“It’s strange. I felt less lonely when I didn’t know you.”
― Jean Paul Sartre, The Flies

“And all these existents which bustled about this tree came from nowhere and were going nowhere. Suddenly they existed, then suddenly they existed no longer: existence is without memory; of the vanished it retains nothing—not even a memory. Existence everywhere, infinitely, in excess, for ever and everywhere; existence—which is limited only by existence. I sank down on the bench, stupefied, stunned by this profusion of beings without origin: everywhere blossomings, hatchings out, my ears buzzed with existence, my very flesh throbbed and opened, abandoned itself to the universal burgeoning. It was repugnant. But why, I thought, why so many existences, since they all look alike? What good are so many duplicates of trees? So many existences missed, obstinately begun again and again missed—like the awkward efforts of an insect fallen on its back? (I was one of those efforts.)”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“a wise person can want nothing better from life than to pay back the wrong that has been done him.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit and Three Other Plays

“Something has happened to me, I can't doubt it anymore. It came as an illness does, not like an ordinary certainty, not like anything evident. It came cunningly, little by little; I felt a little strange, a little put out, that's all. Once established it never moved, it stayed quiet, and i was able to persuade myself that nothing was the matter with me, that it was a false alarm. And now, it's blossoming.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“I get up. I move through this pale light; I see it change beneath my hands and on the sleeves of my coat: I cannot describe how much it disgusts me.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“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.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, The Age of Reason

“They are young and well built, they have another thirty years ahead of them. So they don't hurry, they take their time, and they are quite right. Once they have been to bed together, they will have to find something else to conceal the enormous absurdity of their existence.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“Good digestions, the gray monotony of provincial life, and the boredom—ah the soul-destroying boredom—of long days of mild content.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit and Three Other Plays

“I haven't any troubles, I have some money like a gentleman of leisure, no boss, no wife, no children; I exist, that's all. And that particular trouble is so vague, so metaphysical, that I am ashamed of it.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“Could hell be described as too much of anything without a break? Are variety,
moderation and balance instruments we use to keep us from boiling in any inferno of
excess,' whether it be cheesecake or ravenous sex?”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit

“Happiness is not doing what you want but wanting what you do.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“Never were we freer than under the German Occupation.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, The Aftermath of War

“It isn't freedom from. It's freedom to.”
― Jean Paul Sartre

“Anyhow, isn't it better to think we've got here by
mistake?”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“What a torment it is not to be rich! It gets one into such abject situations.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, The Age of Reason

“I would like to see the truth clearly before it is too late.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“Barefoot conducts his seminars on his houseboat in Sausalito. It costs a hundred dollars to find out why we are on this Earth. You also get a sandwich, but I wasn't hungry that day. John Lennon had just been killed and I think I know why we are on this Earth; it's to find out that what you love the most will be taken away from you, probably due to an error in high places rather than by design.”
― Philip K. Dick

“Believe me there is no such thing as great suffering, great regret, great memory....everything is forgotten, even a great love. That's what's sad about life, and also what's wonderful about it. There is only a way of looking at things, a way that comes to you every once in a while. That's why it's good to have had love in your life after all, to have had an unhappy passion- it gives you an alibi for the vague despairs we all suffer from.”
― Albert Camus, A Happy Death

“In the face of the obscene, explicit malice of the jungle, which lacks only dinosaurs as punctuation, I feel like a half-finished, poorly expressed sentence in a cheap novel.”
― Werner Herzog

“Nothingness haunts Being.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“People are like dice. We throw ourselves in the direction of our own choosing.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays