Albert Camus Quotes
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I have a good, hearty laugh and an energetic handshake, and those are trump cards.
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In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.
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No matter how the sun shone, the sea held forth no more promises.
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Only the sea, murmurous behind the dingy checkerboard of houses, told of the unrest, the precariousness, of all things in this world.
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If one could only say just once: 'this is clear', all would be saved.
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There are always reasons for murdering a man. But there is no justification for his existence.
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Man wants to live, but it is useless to hope that this desire will dictate all his actions.
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But, you know, I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don't really appeal to me, I imagine. What interests me is being a man.
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In fact, other people create for lack of power. I, on the other hand, do not need a work: I live.
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At one time or another all normal people have wished their loved ones were dead.
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If we understood the enigmas of life there would be no need for art.
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Note, besides, that it is no more immoral to directly rob citizens than to slip indirect taxes into the price of goods that they cannot do without.
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In the past, the poverty they shared had a certain sweetness about it. When the end of the day came and they would eat their dinner in silence with the oil lamp between them, there was a secret joy in such simplicity, such retrenchment.
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I know of only one duty, and that is to love.
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After all, every murderer when he kills runs the risk of the most dreadful of deaths, whereas those who kill him risk nothing except promotion.
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What, then, is that incalculable feeling that deprives the mind of the sleep necessary to life? A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.
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But who would dare condemn me in this world with no judges, where no one is innocent!
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One might think, that a period which, within fifty years, uproots, enslaves or kills seventy million human beings, should only, and forthwith, be condemned. But also its guilt must be understood.
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In the vast reaches of the dry, cold night, thousands of stars were constantly appearing, and their sparkling icicles, loosened at once, began to slip gradually toward the horizon.
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To begin with, poor people´s memory is less nourished than that of a rich; it has fewer landmarks in space because they seldom leave the place where they live, and fewer reference points in time throughtout lives that are grey and featureless.
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I know simply that the sky will last longer than I.
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Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.
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So all a man could win in the conflict between plague and life was knowledge and memories.
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We are not so mad as to think that we shall create a world in which murder will not occur. We are fighting for a world in which murder will no longer be legal.