If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.
There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the importance of cherishing the present moment, regardless of its beauty compared to past or future experiences.
Jean-Paul Sartre's quote reflects the value of living in the present and recognizing that each moment, while it may not be the most beautiful, is uniquely ours to experience. It suggests that beauty is subjective and that we should appreciate our current situation, finding significance in the time we have at hand, even amidst a world filled with potentially more beautiful moments.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about mindfulness, you might say, 'As Jean-Paul Sartre once said, 'There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours,' reminding us to live in the moment.'
More from Jean-Paul Sartre
All quotes βAll 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
My life is about ups and downs, great joys and great losses.
Sacrifice is a part of life. Itβs supposed to be. Itβs not something to regret. Itβs something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices. A mother works so her son can go to school. A daughter moves home to take care of her sick father.
Grieving allows us to heal, to remember with love rather than pain. It is a sorting process. One by one you let go of the things that are gone and you mourn for them. One by one you take hold of the things that have become a part of who you are and build again.
Something settiled inside me, something heavy and hard. It stayed there, and i could not think of one thing to make it go away. I thought, So this must be living, this must be the beginning of the time people later refer to as 'years ago, when I was young'.
My story starts with my dad, a black boy born to a single mother in a small town in North Carolina. It starts with my parents meeting in Washington, D.C., in the '60s, at a time of incredible activism.
With the draft, everybody was involved. Everybody was fodder. When you got to be 21, 22 and graduated from college, for two years your life stopped. If you had been running in the direction of your life, you had to stop and do this other thing which was, if not menacing, just plain boring.