Albert Camus Quotes
-
To govern means to pillage, as everyone knows.
-
The kingdom of heaven will, in fact, appear on earth , but it will be ruled over by men a mere handful to begin with, who will be the Cassars, because they were the first to understand and later, with time, by all men.
-
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.
-
Thus, in a middle course between these heights and depths, they drifted through life rather than lived, the prey of aimless days and sterile memories, like wandering shadows that could have acquired substance only by consenting to root themselves in the solid earth of their distress.
-
The best revenge you can have on intellectuals is to be madly happy.
-
My great idea is that we must forgive the Pope. First of all, he needs it more than anyone else. Besides, it is the only way of placing oneself above him.
-
Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.
-
I had been right I was still right I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well lived it another. I had done this and I hadn't done that. I hadn't done this thing and I had done another. And so?
-
The certainty of a God giving meaning to life far surpasses in attractiveness the ability to behave badly with impunity. The choice would not be hard to make. But there is no choice and that is where the bitterness comes in. The absurd does not liberate; it binds.
-
Freedom is not constituted primarily of privileges but of responsibilities.
-
Still, obviously, one can't be sensible all the time.
-
Paneloux is a man of learning, a scholar. He hasn't come in contact with death; that's why he can speak with such assurance of the truth-with a capital T. But every country priest who visits his parishioners and has heard a man gasping for breath on his deathbed thinks as I do. He'd try to relieve human suffering before trying to point out its goodness.
-
Thus I progressed on the surface of life, in the realm of words as it were, never in reality. All those books barely read, those friends barely loved, those cities barely visited, those women barely possessed! I went through the gestures out of boredom or absent-mindedness. Then came human beings; they wanted to cling, but there was nothing to cling to, and that was unfortunate--for them. As for me, I forgot. I never remembered anything but myself.
-
Likewise and during every day of an unillustrious life, time carries us. But a moment always comes when we have to carry it.
-
And often he who has chosen the fate of the artist because he felt himself to be different soon realizes that he can maintain neither his art nor his difference unless he admits that he is like the others. The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from.
-
In this vast country that he had so loved, he was alone.
-
Do not wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.
-
Old women even forget how to love their sons. The heart gets worn out, Monsieur.
-
After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.
-
...we rarely confide in those who are better than we. Rather, we are more inclined to flee their society. Most often, on the other hand, we confess to those who are like us and who share our weaknesses. Hence we don't want to improve ourselves and be bettered, for we should first have to be judged in default. We merely wish to be pitied and encouraged in the course we have chosen. In short, we should like, at the same time, to cease being guilty and yet not to make the effort of cleansing ourselves.
-
There are some individuals who have too strong a craving, a will, and a nostalgia for happiness ever to reach it. They always retain a bitter and passionate aftertaste, and that's the best they can hope for.
-
I have always thought it would be easier to redeem a man steeped in vice and crime than a greedy, narrow-minded, pitiless merchant.
-
The society of merchants can be defined as a society in which things disappear in favor of signs. When a ruling class measures its fortunes, not by the acre of land or the ingot of gold, but by the number of figures corresponding ideally to a certain number of exchange operations, it thereby condemns itself to setting a certain kind of humbug at the center of its experience and its universe. A society founded on signs is, in its essence, an artificial society in which man's carnal truth is handled as something artificial.
-
In art, rebellion is consummated and perpetuated in the act of real creation, not in criticism or commentary.