Nausea Quotes
"Existentialism entered the American consciousness like an elephant entering a dark room: there was a good deal of breakage and the people inside naturally mistook the nature of the intrusion."
"Existentialism is a philosophy -if a philosophy at all- that has been independently invented by millions of people simply responding to the emergency of life in a modern world."
"The name, however, like the names we give all great movements of the human spirit - Romanticism, Transcendentalism- is misleading if we try to use it as a definition."
"William Barrett, in his excellent book Irrational Man, has shown that what we now call the Existentialist impulse is coeval with the myths of Abraham and Job."
"Philosophical truth assumes many forms precisely because times change and men’s needs change with them."
"Existentialism is a recoil from rationalism. Not that Existentialists deny the role of reason; they merely insist that its limits be acknowledged."
"In the first place, Existentialism is opposed to the entire rationalist tradition deriving from the Renaissance and culminating, a hundred-odd years ago, in the 'cosmic rationalism' of Hegel."
"The Existentialist knows that the self is not submerged, it is present, here and now, a suffering existent, and any system of thought that overrides this suffering is tyrannical."
"Looking into his own center, thrusting aside all knowledge, all memory, all sensation, he sees the chasm of the ego, formless and inconceivable, like the nucleus of an electron."
"In a universe grounded in Nothingness, the anthropocentric vision of reality that characterized rational humanism from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century is clearly untenable."
"Mankind, instead of being the central figure on the stage of reality, the rational creature for whom the non-rational world exists, is actually an accident, a late and adventitious newcomer whose life is governed by contingency."
"Suffering is the origin of consciousness," Dostoevski wrote. But suffering is anywhere in the presence of thought and sensitivity."
"Existentialists," wrote the Irish philosopher Arland Ussher, "have a notable difficulty in finishing their books: of necessity, for their philosophy—staying close to the movement of life—can have no finality."
"William Blake once remarked that he had to create his own system of thought in order to avoid being enslaved by those of others."
"My memories are like coins in the devil’s purse: when you open it you find only dead leaves."
"I must stop quickly and think of something else; I don’t want to tire my memories."
"I have never before had such a strong feeling that I was devoid of secret dimensions, confined within the limits of my body."
"The more so since it was a question of abstract considerations on the reign of Paul I."
"I smile at him. I would like this smile to reveal all that he is trying to hide from himself."
"Their wisdom prompts them to make the least possible noise, to live as little as possible, to let themselves be forgotten."
"The past is a landlord’s luxury. Where shall I keep mine? You don’t put your past in your pocket; you have to have a house."
"I recognize my neighbours: small businessmen in the neighbourhood. Sunday is their maids’ day off."
"The beginnings would have had to be real beginnings. Alas! Now I see so clearly what I wanted."
"For a hundred dead stories there still remain one or two living ones. I evoke these with caution, occasionally, not too often, for fear of wearing them out."
"I exist because I think ... and I can't stop myself from thinking."
"Existence, liberated, detached, floods over me. I exist."
"But thought—I am the one who continues it, unrolls it. I exist."
"Each event, when it had played its part, put itself politely into a box and became an honorary event."
"Things are entirely what they appear to be—and behind them... there is nothing."
"The true nature of the present revealed itself: it was what exists, and all that was not present did not exist."
"I am the Thing. Existence, liberated, detached, floods over me. I exist."
"I have no troubles, I have money like a capitalist, no boss, no wife, no children; I exist, that's all."
"Life has a meaning if we choose to give it one."
"I am not a humanist, that’s all there is to it."
"Exist slowly, softly, like these trees, like a puddle of water."
"Existence is a fullness which man can never abandon."
"Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance."
"Existence is without memory; of the vanished it retains nothing—not even a memory."
"Existence is not something which lets itself be thought of from a distance: it must invade you suddenly, master you."
"A man of action... now I simply say: one can’t be a man of action."
"You always lose. Only the rascals think they win."
"I know that I exist, that I am here. Now when I say 'I,' it seems hollow to me. I can't manage to feel myself very well, I am so forgotten."
"The only real thing left in me is existence which feels it exists."
"Who remembers me? Perhaps a heavy young woman in London... And is it really of me that she thinks?"
"It seems funny. Yet I know that I exist, that I am here."
"I am between two cities, one knows nothing of me, the other knows me no longer."
"The city is the first one to abandon me. I have not left Bouville and already I am there no longer."
"The truth is that I can't put down my pen: I think I'm going to have the Nausea and I feel as though I'm delaying it while writing."
"To do something is to create existence—and there's quite enough existence as it is."
"It would have to be beautiful and hard as steel and make people ashamed of their existence."
"A story, for example, something that could never happen, an adventure. It would have to be beautiful and hard as steel and make people ashamed of their existence."