All men are Prophets or else God does not exist.

To believe is to know you believe, and to know you believe is not to believe.

I’ve lived the life of a man without teeth, he thought about it. A life of a man without teeth. I’ve never bitten, I’ve been waiting, keeping myself for later – and now I’ve just...

Hiçbir şey değişmedi, ama yine de her şey başka bir biçimde var olup gidiyor. Anlatamıyorum. Bulantıya benziyor bu, ama aynı zamanda onun tam tersi.

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...

A human being who wakened in the morning with a queesy stomach, with fifteen hours to kill before next bedtime, had not much use for freedom.

We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.

My passion was dead. For years it had rolled over and submerged me; now I felt empty. But that wasn’t the worst: before me, posed with a sort of indolence, was a voluminous, insipid idea....

He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this...

What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world-and defines himself afterward.

I go, I go away, I walk, I wander, and everywhere I go I bear my shell with me, I remain at home in my room, among my books, I do not approach an inch...

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...

Better a good journalist than a poor assassin.

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

Karsky: I met your father last week. Are you still interested in hearing how he is doing?Hugo: No.Karsky: It is very probable that you will be responsible for his death.Hugo: It is virtually certain that...

With older people, it’s quite different. They’re reliable, they show you what to do, and there’s solidity in their affection.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. It is up to you to give [life] a meaning.

Well, you’re free without wanting to be,’ he explained, ‘it just happens so, that’s all. But Mathieu’s freedom is based on reason.”I still don’t understand,’ said Lola, shaking her head.’Well, he doesn’t care a curse...

Love or hatred calls for self-surrender. He cuts a fine figure, the warm-blooded, prosperous man, solidly entrenched in his well-being, who one fine day surrenders all to love—or to hatred; himself, his house, his land,...

But I can’t see anything any more: however much I search the past I can only retrieve scraps of images and I am not sure what they represent, nor whether they are remembered or invented.

In life man commits himself and draws his own portrait, outside of which there is nothing. No doubt this thought may seem harsh to someone who has not made a success of his life. But...

It is the good children, Madame, who make the most terrible revolutionaries. They say nothing, they do not hide under the table, they eat only one sweet at a time, but later on, they make...

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.

Será verdade que sou um salafrário? A poltrona é verde, a corda parece uma alça, isso é indiscutível. Mas em relação às pessoas pode-se sempre discutir, tudo o que fazem pode ser explicado, por cima...

When the rich wage war it’s the poor who die.

Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realizes himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life...

The most clear-sided view of the darkest possible situation is itself an act of optimism

You talk a lot about this amazing flow of time but you hardly see it. you see a women, you think that one day she’ll be old, only you don’t see her grow old. But...

You are — your life, and nothing else.

…freedom only gives you something to be sorry for.

Be quiet! Anyone can spit in my face, and call me a criminal and a prostitute. But no one has the right to judge my remorse.

certain details, somewhat curtailed, live in my memory. But I don’t see anything anymore: I can search the past in vain, I can only find these scraps of images and I am not sure what...

In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.

It’s the well-behaved children that make the most formidable revolutionaries. They don’t say a word, they don’t hide under the table, they eat only one piece of chocolate at a time. But later on, they...

The first crime was mine: I committed it when I made man mortal. Once I had done that, what was left for you, poor human murderers, to do? To kill your victims? But they already...

Thus it amounts to the same thing whether one gets drunk alone or is a leader of nations.

Hell is—other people!

Et voilà, mon passé n’est plus qu’un trou énorme. Mon présent: cette bonne au corsage noir qui rêve près du comptoir, ce petit bonhomme. Tout ce que je sais de ma vie, il me semble...

What then did you expect when you unbound the gag that muted those black mouths? That they would chant your praises? Did you think that when those heads that our fathers had forcibly bowed down...

I see the insipid flesh blossoming and palpitating with abandon.

She smiled and said with an ecstatic air: “It shines like a little diamond”,”What does?””This moment. It is round, it hangs in empty space like a little diamond; I am eternal.

It isn’t freedom from. It’s freedom to.

Poetry creates the myth, the prose writer draws its portrait.

emotion is first of all and in principle an accident

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

If [literature] should turn into pure propaganda or pure entertainment, society will slip back into the sty of the immediate — which is to say, the memoryless existence of hymenoptera and gastropods. None of this...

I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating.

Existentialism is no mournful delectation but a humanist philosophy of action, effort, combat, and solidarity. Man must create his own essence: it is in throwing himself into the world, suffering there, struggling there, that he...

Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.

I’d come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clear-cut language.