Jean-Paul Sartre

"Now I am weary and I can no longer tell good from Evil, and I need someone to show me the way."

"It is better; heavier, crueler. The mouth you wear for hell."

"A man who is free is like a mangy sheep in a herd. He will contaminate my entire kingdom and ruin my work."

"Aegistheus, the kings have another secret.... Once liberty has exploded in the soul of a man, the Gods can do nothing against that man. It is a matter for men to handle amongst themselves, and it is up to other men — and to them alone — to let him flee or to destroy him."

"Man cannot will 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."

"Your crystal? That's silly. Whom do you think you are fooling? Come on, everyone knows that I threw the baby out of the window. The crystal is shattered on earth, and I do not care. I am no longer anything but a skin, and my skin does not belong to you."

"Admit it, it is your youth that you regret, more even than your crime; it is my youth you hate, even more than my innocence."

"I felt less alone when I didn't know you yet: I was waiting for the other. I thought only of his strength and never of my weakness. And now here you are, Orestes, it was you. I look at you and I see that we are two orphans."

"But, if it will help ease your irritated souls, please know, dearly departed, that you have ruined our lives."

"Zeus (Jupiter): Agistheus, you are a king, and it's to your sense of king-ship I appeal, for you enjoy wielding the scepter. Aegistheus: Continue. Zeus: You may hate me, but we are akin; I made you in my image. A king is a god on earth, glorious and terrifying as a god. Aegistheus: You, terrifying? Zeus: Look at me. [A long silence.] I told you you were made in my image. Each keeps order; you in Argos, I in heaven and on earth — and you and I harbor the same dark secret in our hearts. Aegistheus: I have no secret. Zeus: You have. The same as mine. The bane of gods and kings. The bitterness of knowing men are free. Yes, Aegistheus they are free. But your subjects do not know it, and you do."

"Jupiter: I am not your king, impudent larva? Who then has created you? Orestes: You. But you should not have created me free."

"In a world, man must create his own essence: it is in throwing himself into the world, suffering there, struggling there, that he gradually defines himself."

"I will take it all: tongs, molten lead, prongs, garrotes, all that burns, all that tears, I want to truly suffer. Better one hundred bites, better the whip, vitriol, than this suffering in the head, this ghost of suffering which grazes and caresses and never hurts enough."

"Alors, c'est ça l'enfer. Je n'aurais jamais cru... vous vous rappelez: le soufre, le bûcher, le gril... ah! Quelle plaisanterie. Pas besoin de gril, l'enfer, c'est les autres."

"Generally speaking there is no irreducible taste or inclination. They all represent a certain appropriative choice of being. It is up to existential psychoanalysis to compare and classify them. Ontology abandons us here; it has merely enabled us to determine the ultimate ends of human reality, its fundamental possibilities, and the value which haunts it."

"Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear."

"Ah! Do not judge the gods, young man, they have painful secrets."

"Her face seems ravaged by both lightning and hail. But on yours there is something like the promise of a storm: one day passion will burn it to the bone."

"Commoners are weightless. But he was a royal bon vivant who, no matter what, always weighed 125 kilos. I would be very surprised if he didn't have a few pounds left."

"Suppose that I wish to deserve the title of "robber of remorse" and that I place in myself all [the townspeople's] repentence?"

"I have no need for good souls: an accomplice is what I wanted."

"Ah! How I hate the crimes of the new generation: they are dry and sterile as darnel."

"Remember, Orestes: you were part of my herd, you grazed in the fields along with my sheep. Your liberty is nothing but a mange eating away at you, it is nothing but an exile."

"Your entire universe will not be enough to make me guilty. You are the king of the Gods, Jupiter, the king of the stones and of the stars, the king of the waves of the sea. But you are not the king of men."

"I am a man, Jupiter, and each man must invent his own path."

"You are a tiny little girl, Electra. Other little girls dreamed of being the richest or the most beautiful women of all. And you, fascinated by the horrid destiny of your people, you wished to become the most pained and the most criminal ... At your age, children still play with dolls and they play hopscotch. You, poor child, without toys or playmates, you played murder, because it is a game that one can play alone."

"With despair, true optimism begins: the optimism of the man who expects nothing, who knows he has no rights and nothing coming to him, who rejoices in counting on himself alone and in acting alone for the good of all."

"...man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards."

"Criminals together. We're in hell, my little friend, and there's never any mistake there. People are not damned for nothing."

"If we must absolutely mention this state of affairs, I suggest that we call ourselves "absent", that is more proper."

"The For-itself, in fact, is nothing but the pure nihilation of the In-itself; it is like a hole of being at the heart of Being."

"Man is always separated from what he is by all the breadth of the being which he is not. He makes himself known to himself from the other side of the world and he looks from the horizon toward himself to recover his inner being."

"But [your crime] will be there, one hundred times denied, always there, dragging itself behind you. Then you will finally know that you have committed your life with one throw of the die, once and for all, and there is nothing you can do but tug our crime along until your death. Such is the law, just and unjust, of repentance. Then we will see what will become of your young pride."

"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."

"Some men are born committed to action: they do not have a choice, they have been thrown on a path, at the end of that path, an act awaits them, their act."

"They are in bad faith — they are afraid — and fear, bad faith have an aroma that the gods find delicious. Yes, the gods like that, the pitiful souls."

"Yes, I am so free. And what a superb absence is my soul."

"You must be afraid, my son. That is how one becomes an honest citizen."

"Nicias, do you think you can erase with good deeds the wrongs you committed against your mother? What good deed will ever reach her? Her soul is a scorching noon time, without a single breath of a breeze, nothing moves, nothing changes, nothing lives there; a great emaciated sun, an immobile sun eternally consumes her."

"What do I care about Jupiter? Justice is a human issue, and I do not need a god to teach it to me."

"All-powerful god, who am I but the fear that I inspire in others?"

"Blood doubly unites us, for we share the same blood and we have spilled blood."

"It is for the sake of order that I seduced Clytemnestra, for the sake of order that I killed my king. I wanted for order to rule and that it rule through me. I have lived without desire, without love, without hope: I made order. Oh! terrible and divine passion!"

"Understand me: I wish to be a man from somewhere, a man among men. You see, a slave, when he passes by, weary and surly, carrying a heavy load, limping along and looking down at his feet, only at his feet to avoid falling down; he is in his town, like a leaf in greenery, like a tree in a forest, argos surrounds him, heavy and warm, full of herself; I want to be that slave, Electra, I want to pull the city around me and to roll myself up in it like a blanket. I will not leave."

"He is dead, and my hatred has died with him."

"Jupiter: I committed the first crime by creating men as mortals. After that, what more could you do, you the murderers? Aegisteus: Come on; they already had death in them: at most you simply hastened things a little."

"Jupiter: I gave you the liberty to serve me. Orestes: That is possible, but it has turned against you and there is nothing either one of us can do about it."

"I came to claim my kingdom and you refused me because I was not one of you. Now I am one of you, my subjects, we are bound by blood, and I deserve to be your king. Your sins and your remorse, your mighty anguish, I take all upon myself. Fear your dead no more, they are my dead."

"We were too light, Electra. Now our feet press down in the earth like the wheels of a cart in its groove. Come with me, and we will walk heavily, bending under the weight of our heavy load."

"As for me, I am mean: that means that I need the suffering of others to exist. A flame. A flame in their hearts. When I am all alone, I am extinguished."