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.

A human being who wakened in the morning with a queesy stomach, with fifteen hours to kill before next bedtime, had not much use for freedom.

I have always been happy. Even if I had been more honest with regard to myself at that moment I should still have written La Nausee.

There is no human nature, since there is no god to conceive it.

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one's death, one dies one's life.

The more one is absorbed in fighting evil, the less one is tempted to place the good in question.

One cannot become a saint when one works sixteen hours a day.