Quotes About Introspection

A little more and I would have fallen into the mirror trap. I avoided it, but only to fall into the window trap: with nothing to do, my arms dangling, I go over to the window.

freedom only gives you something to be sorry for.

These young people amaze me; drinking their coffee, they tell clear, plausible stories. If you ask them what they did yesterday, they don't get flustered; they tell you all about it in a few words. If I were in their place, I'd start stammering. It's true that for a long time now nobody has bothered how I spend my time. When you live alone, you even forget what it is to tell a story : plausibility disappears at the same time as friends.

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.

And every man ought to say to himself, "Am I really the kind of man who has the right to act in such a way that humanity might guide itself by my actions?" And if he does not say that to himself, he is masking his anguish. There is no question here of the kind of anguish which would lead to quietism, to inaction. It is a matter of a simple sort of anguish that anybody who has had responsibilities is familiar with.

Wait a minute, there's a snag somewhere; something disagreeable. Why, now, should it be disagreeable?...Ah,I see; it's life without a break.

Do you regret those days?' 'No,' replied Marcelle acidly: 'but I regret the life I might have had.

I don't know where to go, I stay planted in front of the cardboard chef. I don't need to turn around to know they are watching me through the windows: they are watching my back with surprise and disgust; they thought I was like them, that I was a man, and I deceived them. I suddenly lost the appearance of a man and they saw a crab running backwards out of this human room. Now the unmasked intruder has fled: the show goes on.

I'm not obstinate, I'm highly strung: I don't know how to let myself go. I must always think of what is happening to me - it's a form of self-protection.

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?

I want no secrets or soul-states, nothing ineffable; I am neither virgin nor priest enough to play with the inner life.

You believe that you believe, but you don't believe.

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.

Perhaps it is impossible to understand one's own face ... 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? You might say -- yes you might say, nature without humanity.

After all, she is lucky. I have been much too calm these past three years. I can receive nothing more from these tragic solitudes than a little empty purity. I leave.

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.

Can you justify your existence then?

Moi, je ne tiens pas les rancunes et j'avoue tout, complaisamment : pour l'autocritique, je suis doué, à la condition qu'on ne prétende pas me l'imposer.

Existentialism's first move is to make every man aware of what he is and to make the full responsibility of his existence rest on him.

sólo el perro o el caballo podrían emitir un juicio de conjunto sobre el hombre y declarar que el hombre es asombroso, lo que ellos no se preocupan de hacer, por lo menos que yo sepa. Pero no se puede admitir que un hombre pueda formular un juicio sobre el hombre.

Creo que soy yo quien ha cambiado; es la solución más simple. También la más desagradable. Pero debo reconocer que estoy sujeto a estas súbitas transformaciones. Lo que ocurre es que rara vez pienso, entonces, sin darme cuenta, se acumula en mí una multitud de pequeñas metamorfosis, y un buen día se produce una verdadera revolución. Es lo que ha dado a mi vida este aspecto desconcertante, incoherente.

It is an abstract change without object. Am I the one who has changed? (...) 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. This is what has given my life such a jerky, incoherent aspect.

When she is alone in the rooms I hear her humming to keep herself from thinking.