Nausea Quotes

“We have so much difficulty imagining nothingness.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“J'ai envie de partir, de m'en aller quelque part où je serais vraiment à ma place, où je m'emboîterais... Mais ma place n'est nulle part; je suis de trop.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“A real panic took hold of me. I didn't know where I was going. I ran along the docks, turned into the deserted streets in the Beauvoisis district; the houses watched my flight with their mournful eyes. I repeated with anguish: Where shall I go? where shall I go? Anything can happen. Sometimes, my heart pounding, I made a sudden right about turn: what was happening behind my back? Maybe it would start behind me and when I would turn around, suddenly, it would be too late. As long as I could stare at things nothing would happen: I looked at them as much as I could, pavements, houses, gaslights; my eyes went rapidly from one to the other, to catch them unawares, stop them in the midst of their metamorphosis. They didn't look too natural, but I told myself forcibly: this is a gaslight, this is a drinking fountain, and I tried to reduce them to their everyday aspect by the power of my gaze. Several times I came across barriers in my path: the Cafe des Bretons, the Bar de la Marine. I stopped, hesitated in front of their pink net curtains: perhaps these snug places had been spared, perhaps they still held a bit of yesterday's world, isolated, forgotten. But I would have to push the door open and enter. I didn't dare; I went on. Doors of houses frightened me especially. I was afraid they would open of themselves. I ended by walking in the middle of the street.
I suddenly came out on the Quai des Bassins du Nord. Fishing smacks and small yachts. I put my foot on a ring set in the stone. Here, far from houses, far from doors, I would have a moment of respite. A cork was floating on the calm, black speckled water.
"And under the water? You haven't thought what could be under the water."
A monster? A giant carapace? sunk in the mud? A dozen pairs of claws or fins labouring slowly in the slime. The monster rises. At the bottom of the water. I went nearer, watching every eddy and undulation. The cork stayed immobile among the black spots.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his life as if he were recounting it.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“Je crois que c'est moi qui ai changé: c'est la solution la plus simple. La plus désagréable aussi. Mais einfin je dois reconnaître que je suis sujet à ces transformations soudaines. Ce qu'il y a, c'est que je pense très rarement; alors une foule depetites métamorphoses s'accumulent en moi sans que j'y prenne garde et puis, un beau jour, il se produit une véritable révolution. C'est ce qui a donné à ma vie cet aspect huerté, incohérent.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“They are young and well built, they have another thirty years ahead of them. So they don't hurry, they take their time, and they are quite right. Once they have been to bed together, they will have to find something else to conceal the enormous absurdity of their existence.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, 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 anymore.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“I am beginning to believe that nothing can ever be proved. These are honest hypotheses which take the facts into account: but I sense so definitely that they come from me, and that they are simply a way of unifying my own knowledge. Not a glimmer comes from Rollebon's side. Slow, lazy, sulky, the facts adapt themselves to the rigour of the order I wish to give them; but it remains outside of them. I have the feeling of doing a work of pure imagination.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“I admire the way we can lie, putting reason on our side.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre , Nausea

“Si seulement je pouvais m'arrêter de penser, ça irait déjà mieux. Les pensées, c'est ce qu'il y a de plus fade. Plus fade encore que de la chair. Ça s'étire à n'en plus finir et ça laisse un drôle de goût. Et puis il y a les mots, au-dedans des pensées, les mots inachevés, les ébauches de phrases qui reviennent tout le temps.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“Je suis seul au milieu de ces voix joyeuses et raisonnables. Tous ces types passent leur temps à s’expliquer, à reconnaître avec bonheur qu’ils sont du même avis. Quelle importance ils attachent, mon Dieu, à penser tous ensemble les mêmes choses.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“I haven’t had any adventures. Things have happened to me, events, incidents, anything you like. But not adventures. It isn’t a matter of words; I am beginning to understand. There is something I longed for more than all the rest - without realizing it properly. It wasn’t love, heaven forbid, nor glory, nor wealth. It was…anyway, I had imagined that at certain moments my life could take on a rare and precious quality. There was no need for extraordinary circumstances: all I asked for was a little order. There is nothing very splendid about my life at present: but now and then, for example when they played music in the cafés, I would l look back and say to myself: in the old days, in London, Meknés, Tokyo, I have known wonderful moments, I have had adventures. It is that which has been taken away from me now. I have just learnt, all of a sudden, for no apparent reason, that I have been lying to myself for ten years. Adventures are in books. And naturally, everything they tell you about in books can happen in real life, but not in the same way. It was to this way of happening that I attached so much importance.”
― Jean-Paul Sarte, Nausea

“Then time started flowing again and the emptiness grew larger.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“To exist is simply to he there; those who exist let themselves be encountered, but you can never deduce anything from them.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“The Nausea has stayed down there, in the yellow light. I am happy: this cold is so pure, this night so pure: am I myself not a wave of icy air? With neither blood, nor lymph, nor flesh. Flowing down this long canal towards the pallor down there. To be nothing but coldness.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“I must wash myself clean with abstract thoughts, transparent as water.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“Три часът. В три винаги е твърде късно или твърде рано за всичко, което ти се ще да сториш. Особен момент от следобеда. А днес е непоносим.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“I haven't any troubles, I have some money like a gentleman of leisure, no boss, no wife, no children; I exist, that's all. And that particular trouble is so vague, so metaphysical, that I am ashamed of it.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“Existo. Es algo tan dulce, tan dulce, tan lento. Y leve; como si se mantuviera solo en el aire. Se mueve. Por todas partes, roces que caen y se desvanecen. Muy suave, muy suave”
― Jean Paul Sartre, Nausea

“to do something is to create existence”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“I see the insipid flesh blossoming and palpitating with abandon.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“I have no taste for work any longer, I can do nothing more except wait for night.
530: Things are bad! Things are very bad: I have it, the filth, the Nausea.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“The sun is not ridiculous, quite the contrary. On everything I like, on the rust of the construction girders, on the rotten boards of the fence, a miserly, uncertain light falls, like the look you give, after a sleepless night, on decisions made with enthusiasm the day before, on pages you have written in one spurt without crossing out a word.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“Will you do me the honour of lunching with me on Wednesday?” “With pleasure.” I had as much desire to eat with him as I had to hang myself.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“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 they represent, whether they are memories or just fiction.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“The rain has stopped, the air is mild, the sky slowly rolls up fine black images : it is more than enough to frame the perfect moment ; to reflect these images, she would cause dark little tides to be born in our hearts. I don't know how to take advantage of the occasion : I walk at random, calm and empty, under this wasted sky.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“Tuesday:
Nothing. Existed.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“Todo lo que existe nace sin razón, se prolonga por debilidad, y muere por casualidad”
― Jean Paul Sartre, Nausea

“I know very well that I don't want to do anything: to do something is to create existence—and there's quite enough existence as it is.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“I have been much too calm these past three years. I can receive nothing more from these tragic solitudes than a little empty purity.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea