Quotes About Existence

Jean-Paul Sartre

BaÅŸlang?ç olmad??? gibi, son da yoktur. Bir kad?n, bir dost, bir kent bir kerede terk edilemez. Hepsi birbirine benzer zaten.

Unser Leben hängt davon ab, was wir aus dem machen, was aus uns gemacht wurde.

man is a useless passion.

Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realises himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.

Voici ce que j'ai pensé : pour que l'événement le plus banal devienne une aventure, il faut et il suffit qu'on se mette à la raconter. C'est ce qui dupe les gens : un homme, c'est toujours un conteur d'histoires, il vit entouré de ses histoires et des histoires d'autrui, il voit tout ce qui lui arrive à travers elles ; et il cherche à vivre sa vie comme s'il la racontait. Mais il faut choisir : vivre ou raconter.

I am not quite sure of being a man: I never found it very difficult. It seemed to me that you had only to let yourself alone.

You don't put your past in your pocket; you have to have a house. I have only my body: a man entirely alone, with his lonely body, cannot indulge in memories; they pass through him. I shouldn't complain: all I wanted was to be free.

Now I knew: things are entirely what they appear to be—and behind them . . . there is nothing. This

We have to deal with human reality as a being which is what it is not and which is not what it is.

You are what you are not and are not what you are.

Faire souffrir c'est posséder et créer tout autant que détruire.

Me gustaría tanto abandonarme, olvidarme, dormir. Pero no puedo, me sofoco: la existencia me penetra por todas partes, por los ojos, por la nariz, por la boca... Y de golpe, de un sólo golpe, el velo se desgarra, he comprendido, he visto.

Faire, et en faisant se faire et n'être rien que ce qu'on fait

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

God is absence. God is the solitude of man.

je prenais tout au sérieux, comme si j'avais été immortel.

If God does not exist, are we provided with any values or commands that could legitimise our behaviour.

This is what fools people: 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 own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell.

An existant can never justify the existence of another existant.

Das Leben hat a priori keinen Sinn. Ehe Sie leben, ist das Leben nichts; es liegt bei Ihnen, ihm einen Sinn zu verleihen, und der Wert ist nichts anderes als der Sinn, den Sie wählen.

The idea is still there, unnameable. It waits, peacefully. Now it seems to say: "Yes? Is that what you wanted? Well, that's exactly what you've never had (remember you fooled yourself with words, you called the glitter of travel, the love of women, quarrels, and trinkets adventure) and this is what you'll never have—and no one other than yourself." But Why? WHY?

My existence began to worry me seriously. Was I not a simple spectre?

This instant which I cannot leave, which locks me in and limits me on every side, this instant I am made of will be no more than a confused dream.