Albert Camus Quotes
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Great feelings take with them their own universe, splendid or abject. They light up with their passion an exclusive world in which they recognize their climate. There is a universe of jealousy, of ambition, of selfishness or generosity. A universe - in other words a metaphysic and an attitude of mind.
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Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. It would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd discovery. It happens as well that the felling of the absurd springs from happiness. "I conclude that all is well," says Oedipus, and that remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted. It drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a preference for futile suffering. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men.
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It's better to bet on this life than on the next.
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To become god is merely to be free on this earth, not to serve an immortal being.
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Whatever we may do, excess will always keep its place in the heart of man, in the place where solitude is found. We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others.
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To insure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough, a police force is needed as well.
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N'attendez pas le Jugement dernier. Il a lieu tous les jours.
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No doubt our love was still there, but quite simply it was unusable, heavy to carry, inert inside of us, sterile as crime or condemnation. It was no longer anything except a patience with no future and a stubborn wait.
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But in order to speak about all and to all, one has to speak of what all know and of the reality common to us all. The seas, rains, necessity, desire, the struggle against death--these are things that unite us all. We resemble one another in what we see together, in what we suffer together. Dreams change from individual, but the reality of the world is common to us all. Striving towards realism is therefore legitimate, for it is basically related to the artistic adventure.
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Poor and free rather than rich and enslaved. Of course, men want to be both rich and free, and this is what leads them at times to be poor and enslaved.
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Your successes and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them.
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After all perhaps the greatness of art lies in the perpetual tension between beauty and pain, the love of men and the madness of creation, unbearable solitude and the exhausting crowd, rejection and consent.
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I conceived at least one great love in my life, of which I was always the object.
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Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.
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The preceding merely defines a way of thinking. But the point is to live.
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We're going forward, but nothing changes.
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One must place one's principles in big things. For the small, graciousness will suffice.
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At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.
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It is not rebellion itself which is noble but the demands it makes upon us.
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Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.
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Every rebellion implies some kind of unity.
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I was absent at the moment I took up the most space.
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Lucifer also has died with God, and from his ashes has arisen a spiteful demon who does not even understand the object of his venture.
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He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.