“Existence is prior to essence.”

Death is a continuation of my life without me.

Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that’s all. There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable, monotonous addition.

We must act out passion before we can feel it.

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.

The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

When the rich wage war it’s the poor who die.

If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I’m still waiting, it’s all been to seduce women basically.

Do you think that I count the days? There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.

Existence is not something which lets itself be thought of from a distance; it must invade you suddenly, master you, weigh heavily on your heart like a great motionless beast – or else there is nothing at all.

Perhaps its inevitable, perhaps one has to choose between being nothing at all and impersonating what one is.

I think that is the big danger in keeping a diary: you exaggerate everything.

I said to myself, ‘I want to die decently’.

In love, one and one are one.

Existence is an imperfection.

I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating.

You are — your life, and nothing else.

There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning.

To be rather than to seem.

With attachment all that seems to exist is just me & that object I desire.

As far as the laws of existence are concerned, there is no good and bad, no crime and punishment. It is just that for every action, there is a consequence.

Factuality itself depends for its continued existence upon the existence of the nontotalitarian world.

Only within metaphysics does logic exist.

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.

But I must at the very beginning lay down this principle – friendship can only exist between good men.