"Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance"
About this Quote
The most provocative phrase is “prolongs itself out of weakness.” Sartre isn’t sneering at ordinary people so much as stripping away the romantic varnish we put on survival. We like to narrate endurance as heroism or destiny; he calls it inertia, habit, fear, appetite, social pressure - the small, unglamorous forces that keep a body and a biography going. The subtext is brutal: if you want your life to mean something, you don’t get to claim you were “meant” to. You have to make it, against the grain of your own passivity.
“Dies by chance” completes the assault on narrative. Death isn’t a final chapter that seals the meaning of a life; it’s contingency, accident, timing. That randomness is what makes Sartrean freedom so expensive. If nothing guarantees significance, you can’t outsource responsibility to fate, God, or History.
The context matters: mid-century Europe, two world wars, the collapse of old certainties, and existentialism’s refusal to offer replacement consolations. The sentence is engineered to offend our craving for reasons - and to force the reader into Sartre’s central wager: meaning is not found, it’s authored under pressure, with no cosmic safety net.
Quote Details
| Topic | Meaning of Life |
|---|---|
| Source | Verified source: La Nausée (Jean-Paul Sartre, 1938)
Evidence: «Tout existant naît sans raison, se prolonge par faiblesse et meurt par rencontre». This line is from Sartre’s novel La Nausée (English: Nausea), spoken/written by the narrator Antoine Roquentin (often quoted in English as “Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.”). The primary-source work is the novel first published in 1938 by Gallimard. I was able to verify the French original wording via secondary discussions that explicitly attribute it to La Nausée and quote the French sentence (e.g., L’Express reproduces the French; other references do likewise). However, I could not, within this search pass, open a scan/preview of the 1938 Gallimard edition (or a clearly paginated authoritative edition preview) that shows the exact page/chapter location; page numbers vary by edition/translation. If you tell me which edition/translation you need (Gallimard original / Folio / Penguin, etc.), I can try to pin down an exact page reference in that specific edition. Other candidates (1) The Psychology of the Spirit: a Contemporary System of Bi... (J. Christopher Garrison, 2001) compilation95.0% ... Sartre had something atheistically relevant to say in Nausea , one of his novels : " Every existing thing is born... |
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Sartre, Jean-Paul. (2026, February 17). Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/every-existing-thing-is-born-without-reason-14645/
Chicago Style
Sartre, Jean-Paul. "Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance." FixQuotes. February 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/every-existing-thing-is-born-without-reason-14645/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance." FixQuotes, 17 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/every-existing-thing-is-born-without-reason-14645/. Accessed 5 Mar. 2026.










