Albert Camus Quotes
-
N'attendez pas le Jugement dernier. Il a lieu tous les jours.
-
The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown. He must dominate in his turn.
-
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.
-
When a war breaks out, people say: 'It's too stupid; it can't last long.' But though the war may well be 'too stupid,' that doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.
-
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.
-
To become god is merely to be free on this earth, not to serve an immortal being.
-
I was absent at the moment I took up the most space.
-
Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter.
-
Fate is not in man but around him.
-
The words that reverberate for us at the confines of this long adventure of rebellion are not formulas for optimism, for which we have no possible use in the extremities of our unhappiness, but words of courage and intelligence which, on the shores of the eternal seas, even have the qualities of virtue.
-
Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.
-
There always comes a time in history when the person who dares to say that 2+2=4 is punished by death. And the issue is not what reward or what punishment will be the outcome of that reasoning. The issue is simply whether or not 2+2=4.
-
For those of us who have been thrown into hell, mysterious melodies and the torturing images of a vanished beauty will always bring us, in the midst of crime and folly, the echo of that harmonious insurrection which bears witness, throughout the centuries, to the greatness of humanity.
-
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.
-
Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature.
-
'This is the truth,' we say. 'You can discuss it as much as you want; we aren't interested. But in a few years there'll be the police who will show you we are right.'
-
It is not rebellion itself which is noble but the demands it makes upon us.
-
Homer tells us also that Sisyphus had put Death in chains. Pluto could not endure the sight of his deserted, silent empire. He dispatched the god of war, who liberated Death from the hands of her conqueror.
-
La vraie générosité envers l'avenir consiste à tout donner au présent.
-
Their guilt made me eloquent because I was not its victim.
-
Every minute of life carries with it its miraculous value, and its face of eternal youth.
-
Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.
-
He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.
-
Artistic creation is a demand for unity and a rejection of the world.