If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.
There were days when you peered into yourself, into the secret places of your heart, and what you saw there made you faint with horror. And then, next day, you didn't know what to make of it,you couldn't interpret the horror you had glimpsed the day before. Yes, you know what evil costs.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote explores the internal struggle of confronting one’s own darker emotions and the confusion that follows.
In this quote, Jean-Paul Sartre delves into the complexities of self-exploration and the unsettling feelings that can arise when one confronts the more sinister aspects of their own psyche. The experience of glimpsing one's own potential for evil can lead to feelings of horror, and the subsequent inability to interpret or understand those emotions can create a sense of existential confusion, highlighting the intricate nature of human consciousness and morality.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a psychological seminar on understanding emotions, one might mention this quote to illustrate the complexities of inner conflict.
More from Jean-Paul Sartre
All quotes →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.
Similar quotes
All systems of morality are based on the idea that an action has consequences that legitimize or cancel it. A mind imbued with the absurd merely judges that those consequences must be considered calmly.
One sometimes feels a guest of one's time and not a member of its household.
The soul, who is lifted by a very great and yearning desire for the honor of God and the salvation of souls, begins by exercising herself, for a certain space of time, in the ordinary virtues, remaining in the cell of self-knowledge, in order to know better the goodness of God towards her.
Suffering is the substance of life and the root of personality, for it is only suffering that makes us persons.
Every man is valued in this world as he shows by his conduct that he wishes to be valued.
We're all just bags of bones and muscle and hormones; I'll never understand what makes our minds do the things we do. It's like that statue of the monkey holding a skull. We're trying to use a thing we don't understand to understand ourselves.