Albert Camus Quotes
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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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Everyone would like to behave like a pagan, with everyone else behaving like a Christian.
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But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?
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Old women even forget how to love their sons. The heart gets worn out, Monsieur.
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Believe me there is no such thing as great suffering, great regret, great memory....everything is forgotten, even a great love. That's what's sad about life, and also what's wonderful about it. There is only a way of looking at things, a way that comes to you every once in a while. That's why it's good to have had love in your life after all, to have had an unhappy passion- it gives you an alibi for the vague despairs we all suffer from.
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All systems of morality are based on the idea that an action has consequences that legitimize or cancel it. A mind imbued with the absurd merely judges that those consequences must be considered calmly.
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Freedom is not constituted primarily of privileges but of responsibilities.
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To govern means to pillage, as everyone knows.
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It would be unjust, and moreover Utopian, for Shakespeare to direct the shoemakers' union. But it would be equally disastrous forthe shoemakers' union to ignore Shakespeare.
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I knew a pure heart who refused tot be mistrustful.... He had written at his doorstep: "From wherever you are, enter and be welcome". Who do you think responded to this lovely invitation? The militia, who made themselves at home and gutted him.
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Methods of thought which claim to give the lead to our world in the name of revolution have become, in reality, ideologies of consent and not of rebellion.
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As for those whose role it is to love us – I mean, relatives and in-laws – It's a different tune. They find the right word, but it's usually the one that wounds.
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Why should it be essential to love rarely in order to love much?
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A nihilist is not one who believes in nothing, but one who does not believe in what exists.
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He was conscious of the disastrous fact that love and desire must be expressed in the same way.
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I don't want to represent man as he is, but only as he might be.
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The act of love is a confession.
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It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.
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Do not wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.
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There is scarcely any passion without struggle.
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Of course, true love is exceptional - two or three times a century, more or less. The rest of the time there is vanity or boredom.
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In the world today, only a philosophy of eternity could justify non-violence.
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The only conception of freedom I can have is that of the prisoner or the individual in the midst of the State. The only one I know is freedom of thought and action.
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Somebody has to have the last word. If not, every argument could be opposed by another and we'd never be done with it.