“It is therefore senseless to think of complaining since nothing foreign has decided what we feel, what we live, or what we are.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Being and Nothingness
“I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Being and Nothingness
“Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being - like a worm.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Being and Nothingness
“I must be without remorse or regrets as I am without excuse; for from the instant of my upsurge into being, I carry the weight of the world by myself alone without help, engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, whatever I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Being and Nothingness
“Thus it amounts to the same thing whether one gets drunk alone or is a leader of nations.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Being and Nothingness
“The appearance of the other in the world corresponds therefore to a congealed sliding of the whole universe.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Being and Nothingness
“The recruit who reports for active duty at the beginning of the war can in some instances be afraid of death, but more often he is 'afraid of being afraid'; that is, he is filled with anguish before himself.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Being and Nothingness
“Temporality is obviously an organised structure, and these three so-called elements of time: past, present, future, must not be envisaged as a collection of 'data' to be added together...but as the structured moments of an original synthesis. Otherwise we shall immediately meet with this paradox: the past is no longer, the future is not yet, as for the instantaneous present, everyone knows that it is not at all: it is the limit of infinite division, like the dimensionless point.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Being and Nothingness
“From the very fact, indeed, that I am conscious of the motives which solicit my action, these motives are already transcendent objects from my consciousness, they are outside; in vain shall I seek to cling to them: I escape from them through my very existence. I am condemned to exist forever beyond my essence, beyond the affective and rational motives of my act: I am condemned to be free.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Being and Nothingness
“Time gnaws and wears away; it separates; it flies. And by virtue of separation--by separating man from his pain or from the object of his pain--time cures.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Being and Nothingness
“It is certain that we cannot escape anguish, for we are anguish.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Being and Nothingness
“Nothingness carries being in its heart.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Being and Nothingness
“We have to deal with human reality as a being which is what it is not and which is not what it is.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Being and Nothingness
“Society demands that he limit himself to his function… There are indeed many precautions to imprison a man in what he is as if we lived in perpetual fear that he might escape from it, that he might break away and suddenly elude his condition.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Being and Nothingness
“The flesh is the pure contingency of presence.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Being and Nothingness
“Every belief is a belief that falls short; one never wholly believes what one believes.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Being and Nothingness
“In irony a man annihilates what he posits within one and the same act; he leads us to believe in order not to be believed; he affirms to deny and denies to affirm; he creatives a positive object but it has no being other than its nothingness.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Being and Nothingness
Jean-Paul Sartre
Born place: in Paris, France
Born date June 21, 1905
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“When we destroy it." She spoke clearly now, steadily now. "If it comes in a form with a dick, I will personally castrate it".”
― Nora Roberts, quote from The Pagan Stone
“Time's passage through the memory is like molten glass that can be opaque or crystallize at any given moment at will: a thousand days are melted into one conversation, one glance, one hurt, and one hurt can be shattered and sprinkled over a thousand days.”
― Gloria Naylor, quote from The Women of Brewster Place
“She spoke loudly in order to be heard above the noise of personal communitainers that were thudding and banging all around them. Some people used earphones, some didn't, clearly believing that as many people as possible should be given the opportunity to appreciate their musical taste. That, combined with the mass leakage from the headsets, created a terrible din and even discreet private conversations had to be conducted at a yell.”
― Ben Elton, quote from Blind Faith
“Why has that man fallen in love with that woman? Because she’s pretty. Why does pretty matter? Because human beings are a mainly monogamous species and so males are choosy about their mates (as male chimpanzees are not); prettiness is an indication of youth and health, which are indications of fertility. Why does that man care about fertility in his mate? Because if he did not, his genes would be eclipsed by those of men who did. Why does he care about that? He does not, but his genes act as if they do. Those who choose infertile mates leave no descendants. Therefore, everybody is descended from men who preferred fertile women, and every person inherits from those ancestors the same preference. Why is that man a slave to his genes? He is not. He has free will. But you just said he’s in love because it is good for his genes. He’s free to ignore the dictates of his genes. Why do his genes want to get together with her genes anyway? Because that’s the only way they can get into the next generation; human beings have two sexes that must breed by mixing their genes. Why do human beings have two sexes? Because in mobile animals hermaphrodites are less good at doing two things at once than males and females are at each doing his or her own thing. Therefore, ancestral hermaphroditic animals were outcompeted by ancestral sexed animals.”
― Matt Ridley, quote from The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature
“Our backs hut from gathering them: how hard they were to find among the concealing leaves, the frosted deceiving grass.”
― Truman Capote, quote from A Christmas Memory
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The Devil's Arithmet...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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