“In Germany, Martin Heidegger turned against his former mentor Edmund Husserl, but later Heidegger's friends and colleagues turned their backs on him. In France, Gabriel Marcel attacked Jean-Paul Sartre, Sartre fell out with Camus, Camus fell out with Merleau-Ponty, Merleau-Ponty… — Sarah Bakewell Copy Share Image
“I do not portray being,” he wrote, “I portray passing. Not the passing from one age to another … but from day to day, from minute… — Sarah Bakewell Copy Share Image
“to see the world exactly as you did half an hour ago is impossible, just as it is impossible to see it from the… — Sarah Bakewell Copy Share Image
“As the modern critic David Quint has summed it up, Montaigne would probably interpret the message for humanity in Christ’s crucifixion as being “Don’t… — Sarah Bakewell Copy Share Image
“He blushed to see other Frenchmen overcome with joy whenever they met a compatriot abroad. The would fall on each other, cluster in a raucous group, and pass whole evenings complaining about the barbarity of the locals. These were the few who actually noticed that locals did things differently. Others managed to travel so ‘covered and wrapped in a taciturn… — Sarah Bakewell Copy Share
“He distinguishes between the German word Seiende, which can refer to any individual entity, such as a mouse or a church door, and Sein, which means the Being that such particular beings have. (In English, one way of signalling the distinction is by using the capital ‘B’ for the latter.) He calls it the ‘ontological difference’ — from ‘ontology’, the… — Sarah Bakewell Copy Share
“Starting from where you are now, you choose. And in choosing, you also choose who you will be. If this sounds difficult and unnerving, it's because it is. Sartre does not deny that the need to keep making decisions brings constant anxiety. He heightens this anxiety by pointing out that what you do really matters. You should make your choices… — Sarah Bakewell Copy Share
“Instead, this cup of coffee is a rich aroma, at once earthy and perfumed; it is the lazy movement of a curlicue of steam rising from its surface. As I lift it to my lips, it is a placidly shifting liquid and a weight in my hand inside its thick-rimmed cup. It is an approaching warmth, then an intense dark… — Sarah Bakewell Copy Share
“As history has repeatedly suggested, nothing is more effective for demolishing traditional legal protections than the combined claims that a crime is uniquely dangerous,… — Sarah Bakewell Copy Share Image
“The Childhood of a Leader’, written in 1938, Sartre examined a character, Lucien, who shores up an identity for himself as an anti-Semite mainly… — Sarah Bakewell Copy Share Image
“Over the centuries, this interpretation and reinterpretation creates a long chain connecting a writer to all future readers- who frequently read each other as… — Sarah Bakewell Copy Share Image
“Be free from vanity and pride. Be free from belief, disbelief, convictions, and parties. Be free from habit. Be free from ambition and greed.… — Sarah Bakewell Copy Share Image
“If you fail to grasp life, it will elude you. If you do grasp it, it will elude you anyway.” — Sarah Bakewell Copy Share Image