Quotes About Identity

Existence precedes essence.

Man must create his own essence: it is in throwing himself into the world, suffering there, struggling there, that he gradually defines himself.

L'homme n'est rien d'autre que son projet, il n'existe que dans la mesure où il se réalise, il n'est donc rien d'autre que l'ensemble de ses actes, rien d'autre que sa vie.

Je parcours la salle du regard, et un violent dégoût m'envahi. Que fais-je ici? Qu'ai-je été me mêler de discourir sur l'humanisme? Pourquoi ces gens sont-ils là? Pourquoi mangent-ils? C'est vrai qu'ils ne savent pas, eux, qu'ils existent. J'ai envie de partir, de m'en aller quelque part où je serais vraiment à ma place , où je m'emboîterais...Mais ma place n'est nulle part; je suis de trop.

Yet he loved, he wanted to live, he saw himself dying; that is enough to make a whole man. Il a aimé, pourtant, il a voulu vivre, il s'est vu mourir; cela suffit pour faire tout un homme.

Ä°nsanlar hikâyecilikten kurtulamaz, kendi hikâyeleri ve baÅŸkalar?n?n hikâyeleri aras?nda yaÅŸar. Ba??na gelen her ÅŸeyi hikâyeler içinden görür. Hayat?n?, sanki anlat?yormuÅŸ gibi yaÅŸamaya çal???r.

Somos aquello que hacemos con lo que hicieron de nosotros.

Tal vez sea imposible comprender el propio rostro. ¿O acaso es porque soy un hombre solo? Los que viven en sociedad han aprendido a mirarse en los espejos, tal como los ven sus amigos. Yo no tengo amigos; ¿por eso es mi carne tan desnuda? Sí, es como la naturaleza sin los hombres.

Nommer c'est montrer et [...] montrer c'est changer.

O homem nada mais é do que o seu projeto; só existe na medida em que se realiza; não é nada além do conjunto de seus atos, nada mais que sua vida. Não existe amor senão aquele que se constrói; não há possibilidade de amor senão a que se manifesta num amor; Um homem compromete-se com sua vida, desenha seu rosto e para além desse rosto, não existe nada.

no nos convertimos en lo que somos sino mediante la negación íntima y radical de lo que han hecho de nosotros

No eres nada más que tu vida.

He seems to be a real enough character, and even tells us that he is thirty years old. Yet whenever Roquentin talks about his past, it has the studied randomness and the glamorous opacity of espionage. He is a spy from the world of nothingness. For instance, he talks carelessly about having been in an unlikely number of places: Shanghai, Moscow, Algiers, Meknes, Saigon, Aden, Hanoi, Angkor.

it is not only oneself that one discovers in the cogito, but also the existence of others.

Biz gümbürtüye gitmiÅŸ insanlar?z, diyordu gururla, biz hayat? ?skalayanlardan?z. Hiçbir iÅŸe yaramayaca??z.

qui suis-je, sinon la peur que les autres ont de moi ?

Nothing has changed and yet everything exists in a different way. I can't describe it; it's like the Nausea and yet it's just the opposite: at last an adventure is happening to me and when I question myself I see that it happens that I am myself and that I am here: it is I who am piercing the darkness, I am as happy as the hero of a novel.

At one point, Roquentin realizes that the seat he is on is a seat only by name: "it could just as well be a dead donkey. . . . Things are divorced from their names. They are there, grotesque, headstrong, gigantic, and it seems ridiculous to call them seats or say anything at all about them: I am in the midst of things, nameless things.

Man is nothing other than what he makes of himself.

All fear is ultimately fear of no-self.

The you that you think of as you (and that thinks of you as you, and so on) is not you, it's just the character that the underlying truth of you is dreaming into existence. Enlightenment isn't in the character, it's in the underlying truth.

I'll rise like an ember in your name.

Since I am not actually a real human being, my emotional responses are generally limited to what I have learned to fake.

I rose to my knees, mouth dry and heart pounding, and paused to finger a rip in my beautiful Dacron bowling shirt. I pushed my fingertip through the hole and wiggled it at myself. Hello, Dexter, where are you going? Hello, Mr. Finger. I don't know, but I'm almost there. I hear my friends calling.