Home > Author > Sarah Bakewell >

" Raymond Aron wrote of Sartre in his schooldays that ‘his ugliness disappeared as soon as he began to speak, as soon as his intelligence erased the pimples and swellings of his face’. Another acquaintance, Violette Leduc, agreed that his face could never be ugly because it was illuminated by the brilliance of his mind, as well as having ‘the honesty of an erupting volcano’ and ‘the generosity of a newly ploughed field’. "

Sarah Bakewell , At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails


Image for Quotes

Sarah Bakewell quote : Raymond Aron wrote of Sartre in his schooldays that ‘his ugliness disappeared as soon as he began to speak, as soon as his intelligence erased the pimples and swellings of his face’. Another acquaintance, Violette Leduc, agreed that his face could never be ugly because it was illuminated by the brilliance of his mind, as well as having ‘the honesty of an erupting volcano’ and ‘the generosity of a newly ploughed field’.