If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.
Jean-Paul SartreRead
We will not go to Heaven,Goetz, and even if we both entered it, we would not have eyes to see each other, nor hands to touch each other. Up there, God gets all the attention.... We can only love on this earth and against God.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Love is an earthly experience that separates us from divine attention.
In this quote, Sartre expresses the sentiment that human love is fundamentally tied to our earthly existence. He suggests that if there were a Heaven, the divine would monopolize our attention, leaving no space for the intimate connections we share with one another. This contemplation highlights the transient and unique nature of love in our mortal lives, asserting that true love is experienced in the realm of our physical existence rather than in an idealized afterlife.
Themes
LoveHeavenEarthAttentionConnectionExistence
In practice
Example use cases
During a wedding ceremony to emphasize the significance of love in earthly life.
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.
Jean-Paul SartreRead
If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company.
Jean-Paul SartreRead
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.
Jean-Paul SartreRead
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.
Jean-Paul SartreRead
Night is falling: at dusk, you must have good eyesight to be able to tell the Good Lord from the Devil.
Jean-Paul SartreRead
Similar quotes
Love can never possess. Love is giving freedom to the other. Love is an unconditional gift, it is not a bargain.
RajneeshRead
La Maga did not know that my kisses were like eyes which began to open up beyond her, and that I went along outside as if I saw a different concept of the world, the dizzy pilot of a black prow which cut the water of time and negated it.
Julio CortazarRead
Is it still cool to go to the mall?' she asked. 'I take quite a lot of pride in not knowing what's cool,' I answered.
John GreenRead
You know, something happened to me when I became 70. I started to feel a tremendous love for the human race, and life and this planet, the universe, the whole shebang.
Yoko OnoRead
And may my bronze name / touch always her thousand fingers / grow brighter with her weeping / until I am fixed like a galaxy / and memorized / in her secret and fragile skies.
Leonard CohenRead
You said, 'I'm going to leave him because my love for you makes any other life a lie.' I've hidden these words in the lining of my coat. I take them out like a jewel thief when no-one's watching. They haven't faded. Nothing about you has faded. You are still the colour of my blood. You are my blood. When I look in the mirror it's not my own face I see. Your body is twice. Once you once me. Can I be sure which is which?
Jeanette WintersonRead