Handing over a bank note is enough to make a bicycle belong to me, but my entire life is needed to realize this possession.

All I want is' - and he uttered the final words through clenched teeth and with a sort of shame - 'to retain my freedom.' I should myself have thought,' said Jacques, 'that freedom consisted in frankly confronting situations into which one had deliberately entered, and accepting all one's responsibilities. But that, no doubt, is not your view.

When I can't see myself in the mirror, I can't even feel myself, and I begin to wonder if I exist at all.

Don't you feel the same way? When I cannot see myself, even though I touch myself, I wonder if I really exist.

Never have I thought that I was the happy possessor of a "talent;" my sole concern has been to save myself by work and faith.

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

Good digestions, the gray monotony of provincial life, and the boredom-ah the soul-destroying boredom-of long days of mild content.