Skip to content

Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away.... To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives.

— Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness (1943)

Another quote →

Topics

Kindness

More quotes by Jean-Paul Sartre

I cannot make liberty my aim unless I make that of others equally my aim.

Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946)

Absurd, irreducible; nothing — not even a profound and secret delirium of nature — could explain it.

Nausea (1938)

For those who want 'to change life", 'to reinvent love,' God is nothing but a hindrance.

Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)

I tell you in truth: all men are Prophets or else God does not exist.

The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)

I will not be modest. Humble, as much as you like, but not modest. Modesty is the virtue of the lukewarm.

The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)

All Jean-Paul Sartre quotes →

You may also like

Compassion and tolerance are not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama Words Of Wisdom: Selected Quotes by His Holiness the Dalai Lama (2001)

Affectation hides three times as many virtues as charity does sins.

Horace Mann Thoughts Selected from the Writings of Horace Mann (1867)

A daughter who respects you while you’re alive is far better than a son who performs the rites and rituals after you’re gone.

Sanu Sharma

O proud philanthropist, your hope is vain
To get by giving what you lost by gain.

Ambrose Bierce

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Jean-Paul Sartre (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.