He is always becoming, and if it were not for the contingency of death, he would never end.

As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.

From the period when I wrote La Nausea I wanted to create a morality. My evolution consists in my no longer dreaming of doing so.

I grow warm, I begin to feel happy. There is nothing extraordinary in this, it is a small happiness of Nausea: it spreads at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of out time - the time of purple suspenders, and broken chair seats; it is made of white, soft instants, spreading at the edge, like an oil stain. No sooner than born, it is already old, it seems as though I have known it for twenty years.

Heroism is not to be won at the point of a pen.

When the rich [and politically powerful] make war, it's the poor [and politically weak] who die.

Neither sex, without some fertilization of the complimentary characters of the other, is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavor.