Quotes from Nausea

Jean-Paul Sartre ·  178 pages

Rating: (65.6K votes)


“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, quote from Nausea


“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, quote from Nausea


“Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Nausea


“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, quote from Nausea


“My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think… and I can't stop myself from thinking. At this very moment - it's frightful - if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing. I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Nausea



“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, quote from Nausea


“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, quote from Nausea


“I am. I am, I exist, I think, therefore I am; I am because I think, why do I think? I don't want to think any more, I am because I think that I don't want to be, I think that I . . . because . . . ugh!”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Nausea


“This is what I thought: for the most banal even to become an adventure, you must (and this is enough) begin to recount it. This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, 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.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Nausea


“I have crossed the seas, I have left cities behind me,
and I have followed the source of rivers towards their
source or plunged into forests, always making for other
cities. I have had women, I have fought with men ; and
I could never turn back any more than a record can spin
in reverse. And all that was leading me where ?
To this very moment...”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Nausea



“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, quote from Nausea


“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, quote from Nausea


“You must be like me; you must suffer in rhythm.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Nausea


“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, quote from Nausea


“Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that's all. There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable, monotonous addition.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Nausea



“You know, it's quite a job starting to love somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment, in the very beginning, when you have to jump across a precipice: if you think about it you don't do it.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Nausea


“I jump up: it would be much better if I could only stop thinking. Thoughts are the dullest things. Duller than flesh. They stretch out and there's no end to them and they leave a funny taste in the mouth. Then there are words, inside the thoughts, unfinished words, a sketchy sentence which constantly returns: "I have to fi. . . I ex. . . Dead . . . M. de Roll is dead . . . I am not ... I ex. . ." It goes, it goes . . . and there's no end to it. It's worse than the rest because I feel responsible and have complicity in it. For example, this sort of painful rumination: I exist, I am the one who keeps it up. I. The body lives by itself once it has begun. But though I am the one who continues it, unrolls it. I exist. How serpentine is this feeling of existing, I unwind it, slowly. ... If I could keep myself from thinking! I try, and succeed: my head seems to fill with smoke . . . and then it starts again: "Smoke . . . not to think . . . don't want to think ... I think I don't want to think. I mustn't think that I don't want to think. Because that's still a thought." Will there never be an end to it?
My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think . . . and I can't stop myself from thinking. At this very moment, it's frightful, if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing. I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire: the hatred, the disgust of existing, there are as many ways to make myself exist, to thrust myself into existence. Thoughts are born at the back of me, like sudden giddiness, I feel them being born behind my head ... if I yield, they're going to come round in front of me, between my eyes, and I always yield, the thought grows and grows and there it is, immense, filling me completely and renewing my existence.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Nausea


“Little flashes of sun on the surface of a cold, dark sea.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Nausea


“I exist. It is soft, so soft, so slow. And light: it seems as though it suspends in the air. It moves.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Nausea


“But 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.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Nausea



“I dreamed vaguely of killing myself to wipe out at least one of these superfluous lives. But even my death would have been In the way. In the way, my corpse, my blood on these stones, between these plants, at the back of this smiling garden. And the decomposed flesh would have been In the way in the earth which would receive my bones, at last, cleaned, stripped, peeled, proper and clean as teeth, it would have been In the way: I was In the way for eternity.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Nausea


“I do not think, therefore I am a moustache”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Nausea


“I think that is the big danger in keeping a diary: you exaggerate everything.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Nausea


“I looked anxiously around me: the present, nothing but the present. Furniture light and solid, rooted in its present, a table, a bed, a closet with a mirror-and me. the true nature of the present revealed itself: it was what exists, and all that was not present did not exist. The past did not exist. Not at all. Not in things, not even in my thoughts. It is true that I had realized a long time ago that mine had escaped me. But until then I had believed that it had simply gone out of my range. For me the past was only a pensioning off: it was another way of existing, a state of vacation and inaction; each event, when it had played its part, put itself politely into a box and became an honorary event: we have so much difficulty imagining nothingness. Now I knew: things are entirely what they appear to be-and behind them... there is nothing.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Nausea


“Existence is not something which lets itself be thought of form a distance; it must invade you suddenly, master you, weigh heavily on your heart like a great motionless beast - or else there is nothing at all.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Nausea



“He is always becoming, and if it were not for the contingency of death, he would never end.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Nausea


“Objects should not touch because they are not alive. You use them, put them back in place, you live among them: they are useful, nothing more. But they touch me, it is unbearable. I am afraid of being in contact with them as though they were living beasts.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Nausea


“I grow warm, I begin to feel happy. There is nothing extraordinary in this, it is a small happiness of Nausea: it spreads at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of out time - the time of purple suspenders, and broken chair seats; it is made of white, soft instants, spreading at the edge, like an oil stain. No sooner than born, it is already old, it seems as though I have known it for twenty years.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Nausea


“Most of the time, because of their failure to fasten on to words, my thoughts remain misty and nebulous. They assume vague, amusing shapes and are then swallowed up: I promptly forget them.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Nausea


“People. You must love people. Men are admirable. I want
to vomit—and suddenly, there it is: the Nausea”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from Nausea



About the author

Jean-Paul Sartre
Born place: in Paris, France
Born date June 21, 1905
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“I am fading away. Slowly but surely. Like the sailor who watches his home shore gradually disappear, I watch my past recede. My old life still burns within me, but more and more of it is reduced to the ashes of memory.”
― Jean-Dominique Bauby, quote from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly


“He was the soul of politeness to everyone -- to some with a hint of aversion, to others with a hint of respect. ”
― Ivan Turgenev, quote from Fathers and Sons


“And I told you that one night wan't enough."
Loki leaned down, kissing me deeply and pressing me to him. I didn't even attempt to resist. I wrapped my arms around his neck. It wasn't the we had kissed before, not as hungry or fevered. This was something different, nicer.
We were holding onto each other, knowing this might be the last time we could. It felt sweet and hopeful and tragic all at once.
When he stopped kissing me he rested his forehead against mine. He breathed as if struggling to catch his breath. i reached up and touched his face, his skin smooth and cool beneath my hand.
Loki lifted his head so he could look me in the eyes, and I saw something in them, something I'd never seen before. Something pure and unadulterated, and my heart seemed to grow with the warmth of my love for him.
I didn't know how it happened or when it had, but I knew it with complete certainty. I had fallen in love with Loki, more intensely than anything I had felt for anyone before.”
― Amanda Hocking, quote from Ascend


“Them as can do has to do for them as can't. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from The Wee Free Men


“Maddox held Ashlyn for several hours as she napped, hopefully reviving body and soul. Time was his enemy, midnight fast sneaking up on him, but he didn't wake her”
― Gena Showalter, quote from The Darkest Night


Interesting books

Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy
(23.3K)
Tales from the Shado...
by Cassandra Clare
The Zookeeper's Wife
(56.5K)
The Zookeeper's Wife
by Diane Ackerman
The Dante Club
(34.4K)
The Dante Club
by Matthew Pearl
I, Coriander
(6.3K)
I, Coriander
by Sally Gardner
True History of the Kelly Gang
(16.7K)
True History of the...
by Peter Carey
Modoc: The True Story of the Greatest Elephant That Ever Lived
(8.3K)

About BookQuoters

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.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.