Albert Camus Quotes
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All I know of morality I learned from football.
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I continue to believe that this world has no ultimate meaning. But I know that something in it has a meaning and that is man, because he is the only creature to insist on having one.
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Do not wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.
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Chacun exige d'e" tre innocent, a' tout prix, me" me si, pour cela, il faut accuser le genre humain et le ciel. Everyone insists on his or her innocence, at all costs, even if it means accusing the rest of the human race and heaven.
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In art, rebellion is consummated and perpetuated in the act of real creation, not in criticism or commentary.
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To know oneself, one should assert oneself.
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I was always able to understand my friend who decided to quit smoking and who, through an effort of will, succeeded in doing so. One morning, he opened the newspaper, read that the first H- bomb had exploded, found out about the bomb's admirable effects and went straight to the tobacconist's.
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Absurd- that is the light mind that establishes its own borders.
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...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.
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I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world.
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I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
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I was tormented by my desire for a woman ... I thought so much about a woman, about women, about all the ones I had known, about all the circumstances in which I had enjoyed them, that my cell would be filled with their faces and crowded with my desires.
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I cling like a miser to the freedom that disappears as soon as there is an excess of things.
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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.
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It is always easy to be logical. It is almost impossible to be logical to the bitter end.
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I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.
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In short, they were gambling on their luck, and luck is not to be coerced.
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The best revenge you can have on intellectuals is to be madly happy.
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Always there comes an hour when one is weary of one's work and devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart.
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Men die and they are not happy.
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Art does not tolerate reason.
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The absurd has meaning only in so far as it is not agreed to.
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... habit starts at the second crime. At the first one, something is ending.
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He knew now that it was his own will to happiness which must make the next move. But if he was to do so, he realized that he must come to terms with time, that to have time was at once the most magnificent and the most dangerous of experiments. Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.