Jean-Paul Sartre

I think that is the big danger in keeping a diary: you exaggerate everything.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

I suppose it is out of laziness that the world is the same day after day. Today it seemed to want to change. And then anything, anything could happen

—Jean-Paul Sartre

The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

Man is condemned to be free. Condemned because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

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

If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

There is only one day left, always starting over: It is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

In love, one and one are one.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

People who live in society have learnt 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

I am going to outlive myself. Eat, sleep, sleep, eat. Exist slowly, softly, like these trees, like a puddle of water, like the red bench in the streetcar.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

Every word has consequences. Every silence, too.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

Through the lack of attaching myself to words, my thoughts remain nebulous most of the time. They sketch vague, pleasant shapes and then are swallowed up; I forget them almost immediately.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

We are our choices.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

To know what life is worth you have to risk it once in a while.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

I am alone in the midst of these happy, reasonable voices. All these creatures spend their time explaining, realizing happily that they agree with each other. In Heaven’s name, why is it so important to think the same things all together.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

Life begins on the other side of despair.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

You are — your life, and nothing else.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

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

Better to die on one’s feet than to live on one’s knees.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

It answers the question that was tormenting you: my love, you are not ‘one thing in my life’ – not even the most important – because my life no longer belongs to me because…you are always me.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

Life has no meaning, the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

I’m going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

Only the guy who isn’t rowing has time to rock the boat.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

It’s quite an undertaking to start loving somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment right at the start where you have to jump across an abyss: if you think about it you don’t do it.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

Do you think that I count the days? There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours.

—Jean-Paul Sartre

Hell is—other people!

—Jean-Paul Sartre