Benjamin > Benjamin's Quotes

“They might not need me; but they might.
I'll let my head be just in sight;
A smile as small as mine might be
Precisely their necessity.”
― Emily Dickenson

“Anger as soon as fed is dead-
'Tis starving makes it fat. ”
― Emily Dickinson, Selected Poems

“Better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees.”
― Jean Paul Sartre

“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.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“We are our choices.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“Everything has been figured out, except how to live.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“You are -- your life, and nothing else.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit

“Words are loaded pistols.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“Life begins on the other side of despair.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“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.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“Man is what he wills himself to be.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit and Three Other Plays

“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, Nausea

“There is only one day left, always starting over: It is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

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

“Life has no meaning a priori… It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“In love, one and one are one.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“Existence is prior to essence.”
― Sartre Jean-Paul

“Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“Il n'y a de réalité que dans l'action.

(There is no reality except in action.)”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism

“Existence is an imperfection.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“The aim of language...is to communicate...to impart to others the results one has obtained...As I talk, I reveal the situation...I reveal it to myself and to others in order to change it.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“An individual chooses and makes himself.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“Once freedom lights its beacon in man's heart, the gods are powerless against him.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.
”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are - that is the fact. ”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become. ”
― Jean-Paul Sartre