Albert Camus Quotes
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It is not the world that is absurd, nor human thought: the absurd arises when the human need to understand meets the unreasonableness of the world, when 'my appetite for the absolute and for unity' meets 'the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle.'
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Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.
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For the existentials, negation is their God. To be precise, that god is maintained only through the negation of human reason. But, like suicides, gods change with men.
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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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Travel, which is like a greater and a graver science, brings us back to ourselves.
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All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.
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The day of my arrest I was first put in a room where there were already several other prisoners, most of them Arabs. They laughed when they saw me. Then they asked what I was in for. I said I'd killed an Arab and they were all silent.
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The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
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Mon cher ami, let's not give them any pretext, no matter how small, for judging us!!! Otherwise, we'll be left in shreds. We are forced to take the same precautions as the animal trainer. If, before going into the cage, he has the misfortune to cut himself while shaving, what a feast for the wild animals!!
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You always get exaggerated notions of things you don't know anything about.
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I make myself strict rules in order to correct my nature. But it is my nature that I finally obey.
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To create today is to create dangerously. Any publication is an act, and that act exposes one to the passions of an age that forgives nothing.
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The laws of nature may be operative up to a certain limit, beyond which they turn against themselves to give birth to the absurd.
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... one cannot be happy in exile or in oblivion. One cannot always be a stranger. I want to return to my homeland, make all my loved ones happy. I see no further than this.
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Absolute freedom mocks at justice. Absolute justice denies freedom. To be fruitful, the two ideas must find their limits in each other.
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To create is likewise to give a shape to one's fate.
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But all the long speeches, all the interminable days and hours that people had spent talking about my soul, had left me with the impression of a colorless swirling river that was making me dizzy.
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Only it takes time to be happy. A lot of time. Happiness, too, is a long patience. And in almost every case, we use up our lives making money, when we should be using our money to gain time.
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What is a rebel? A man who says no: but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation.
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We must stitch up what has been torn apart, render justice imaginable in the world which is so obviously unjust, make happiness meaningful for nations poisoned by the misery of this century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But tasks are called superhuman when men take a long time to complete them, that is all.
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Let’s not beat around the bush; I love life - that’s my real weakness. I love it so much that I am incapable of imagining what is not life.
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What must be remembered in any case is that secret complicity that joins the logical and the everyday to the tragic.
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The urge to revolt is one of the essential dimensions of human nature.
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In normal times all of us know, whether consciously or not, that there is no love which can't be bettered; nevertheless, we reconcile ourselves more or less easily to the fact that ours has never risen above the average.