Albert Camus Quotes
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If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.
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It is immoral not to tell.
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Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.
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A stranger to myself and to the world, armed solely with a thought that negates itself as soon as it asserts, what is this condition in which I can have peace only by refusing to know and to live, in which the appetite for conquest bumps into walls that defy its assaults?
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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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I have no idea what's awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing.
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I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't.
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The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown. He must dominate in his turn.
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I spent a long time looking at faces, drinking in smiles. Am I happy or unhappy? It’s not a very important question. I live with such frenzied intensity. Things and people are waiting for me, and doubtless I am waiting for them and desiring them with all my strength and sadness. But, here, I earn the right to be alive by silence and by secrecy. The miracle of not having to talk about oneself.
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Have you noticed that only death arouses our emotions? How we love thee friends who have just passed away, right? How we admire those master who no longer speak, their mouths full of dirt. We them we are not obligated.
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... unhappiness is like marriage. We believe we chose it, but then it is choosing us. That is how it is, we can do nothing about it.
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We must learn how to lend ourselves to dreaming when dreams lend themselves to us.
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A régime Nazism which invented a biological foreign policy was obviously acting against its own best interests. But at least it obeyed its own particular logic.
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Travel, which is like a greater and a graver science, brings us back to ourselves.
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The Poor Man whom everyone speaks of, the Poor Man whom everyone pities, one of the repulsive Poor from whom charitable souls keep their distance, he has still said nothing. Or, rather, he has spoken through the voice of Victor Hugo, Zola, Richepin. At least, they said so. And these shameful impostures fed their authors. Cruel irony, the Poor Man tormented with hunger feeds those who plead his case.
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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.
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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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But the world itself has no reason, and I can say so, I who have experienced it all, from the creation to the destruction.
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The preceding merely defines a way of thinking. But the point is to live.
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Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.
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I lived with the only continuity, day to day, of the me-me-me.
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'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.'
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He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.
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Purely historical thought is therefore nihilistic: it wholeheartedly accepts the evil of history and in this way is opposed to rebellion.