Jean-Paul Sartre

Being-in-itself is never either possible or impossible. It is. This is what consciousness expresses in anthropomorphic terms by saying that being is de trop-that is, that consciousness absolutely can not derive being from anything, either from another being, or from a possibility, or from a necessary law. Uncreated, without reason for being, without any connection with another being, being-in-itself is de trop for eternity.

I exist. It is soft, so soft, so slow. And light: it seems as though it suspends in the air. It moves.

I exist. It's sweet, so sweet, so slow. And light: you'd think it floated all by itself. It stirs. It brushes by me, melts and vanishes. Gently, gently.

Exist slowly, softly, like these trees, like a puddle of water, like the red bench in the streetcar.

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

The existent individual, as Kierkegaard defines him, is first of all he who is in an infinite relationship with himself and has an infinite interest in himself and his destiny. Secondly, the existent individual always feels himself to be in Becoming, with a task before him.

People are like dice. We throw ourselves in the direction of our own choosing.

Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.

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.

The individual's duty is to do what he wants to do, to think whatever he likes, to be accountable to no one but himself, to challenge every idea and every person.

What is important is not what happens to us, but how we respond to what happens to us.

Not only is man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills himself to be after this thrust toward existence. Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.

An individual chooses and makes himself.

I can always choose, but I ought to know that if I do not choose, I am still choosing. It is only in our decisions that we are important.

Life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to make sense of and the value of it is nothing else but the sense that you choose.

When you want to understand something you stand in front of it, alone, without help: all the past in the world is of no use.

Life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to make sense of and the value of it is nothing else but the sense that you choose

Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.

You don't put your past in your pocket; you have to have a house. I have only my body: a man entirely alone, with his lonely body, cannot indulge in memories; they pass through him. I shouldn't complain: all I wanted was to be free.

As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.

Naturally, in the course of my life I have made lots of mistakes, large and small, for one reason or another, but at the heart of it all, every time I made a mistake it was because I was not radical enough.

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 there are moments when you think you see her grow old and feel yourself growing old with her: this is the feeling of adventure.

A wise person can want nothing better from life than to pay back the wrong that has been done him.

I found everything perfectly clear, and I really understood absolutely nothing.