Albert Camus Quotes
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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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Only he who is uncompromising as to his rights maintains the sense of duty.
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The true work of art is always on the human scale. It is essentially the one that says, 'less.
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Lying is not only saying what isn't true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels. We all do it, every day, to make life simpler.
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We all have a weakness for beauty.
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I was absent at the moment I took up the most space.
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Whoever today speaks of human existence in terms of power, efficiency, and historical tasks is an actual or potential assassin.
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I knew that I had shattered the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I'd been happy. Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness.
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People don't love each other at our age, Marthe—they please each other, that's all. Later on, when you're old and impotent, you can love someone. At our age, you just think you do. That's all it is.
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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 would become of the world if the condemned started to confide their heartaches to the executioners?
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Believe me, religions are on the wrong track the moment they moralize and fulminate commandments. God is not needed to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men suffice, aided by ourselves.
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In order to be created, a work of art must first make use of the dark forces of the soul.
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There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night.
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To feel absolutely right is the beginning of the end.
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What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch, what resists me - that I understand. And these two certainties - my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle - I also know that I cannot reconcile them. What other truth can I admit without lying, without bringing in a hope I lack and which means nothing within the limits of my conditions?
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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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The most important thing you do everyday you live is deciding not to kill yourself.
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Happiness is not everything and men have their duties. Mine is to find my mother, a homeland.
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Men like us are good and proud and strong...if we had a faith, a God, nothing could undermine us. But we had nothing, we had to learn everything, and living for honor alone has its weaknesses.
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Every minute of life carries with it its miraculous value, and its face of eternal youth.
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Without work all life goes rotten.
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You must have a love, a great love, to ensure an alibi at unjustified despairs that conquer all of us.
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We are condemned to live together.