If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.
Jean-Paul SartreRead
If I relegate impossible Salvation to the prop room, what remains? A whole man, composed of all men and as good as all of them and no better than any.
Interpretation
This quote explores the idea of embracing humanity and accepting our flaws, rather than relying on unattainable ideals.
In this quote, Jean-Paul Sartre suggests that by dismissing the notion of unattainable salvation or perfection, we are left with the essence of being human. It emphasizes that every individual is made up of their own experiences and imperfections, and we are all essentially equal in our humanity. This perspective encourages acceptance of oneself and others, recognizing that no one is better than the collective experience of humanity.
In practice
This quote can be used in discussions about self-acceptance in a mental health workshop.
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.
there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock
No history can be a faithful mirror. If it were, it would be as long and as dull as life itself. It must be a selection, and, being a selection, must inevitably be biased.
There is a principle which is pure, placed in the human mind, which in different places and ages hath had different names. It is, however, pure and proceeds from God. It is deep and inward, confined to no forms of religion nor excluded from any, where the heart stands in perfect sincerity. In whomsoever this takes root and grows, of what nation soever, they become brethren in the best sense of the expression.
The years ahead will be great ones for our country, for the cause of freedom and the spread of civilization. The West will not contain Communism, it will transcend Communism. We will not bother to denounce it, we'll dismiss it as a sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written.
One will seldom go wrong if one attributes extreme actions to vanity, average ones to habit, and pretty ones to fear.
It would seem from this fact, that man is naturally a wild animal, and that when taken from the woods, he is never happy in his natural state, 'till he returns to them again.
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