If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.
Jean-Paul SartreRead
Before you come alive, life is nothing; it 's up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing else but the meaning that you choose.
Interpretation
Life gains meaning through our choices and interpretations.
This quote by Jean-Paul Sartre emphasizes the existentialist view that life itself has no inherent meaning; instead, it is up to each individual to create their own meaning and attach value to their existence. It suggests that consciousness and individual choices are what allow us to experience life fully and give it significance.
In practice
Use this quote in a motivational speech about taking charge of one's destiny.
If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.
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.
If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company.
A kiss without a moustache, they said then, is like an egg without salt; I will add to it: and it is like Good without Evil.
I wanted pure love: foolishness; to love one another is to hate a common enemy: I will thus espouse your hatred. I wanted Good: nonsense; on this earth and in these times, Good and Bad are inseparable: I accept to be evil in order to become good.
Night is falling: at dusk, you must have good eyesight to be able to tell the Good Lord from the Devil.
If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man, don't bother analyzing his ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, of seeing how much he is moved by noble ideas; you will get better results if you just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man.
Mistakes are joyful, truth infernal.
It is foolish to view realism and idealism as incompatible or to consider our power and wealth as encumbered by the demands of justice, morality, and conscience.
There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise.
He who has no vision of eternity has no hold on time.
To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object photographed.
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