Albert Camus Quotes
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The entire history of mankind is, in any case, nothing but a prolonged fight to the death for the conquest of universal prestige and absolute power.
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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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If those whom we begin to love could know us as we were before meeting them they could perceive what they have made of us.
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At that time, I often thought that if I had had to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but look up at the sky flowing overhead, little by little I would have gotten used to it.
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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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Those who write clearly have readers.
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I have never been able, really, to regret anything in all my life. I have always been far much too absorbed in the present moment or the immediate future to think back.
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From the evening breeze to this hand on my shoulder, everything has its truth.
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It is impossible to give a clear account of the world, but art can teach us to reproduce it-just as the world reproduces itself in the course of its eternal gyrations. The primordial sea indefatigably repeats the same words and casts up the same astonished beings on the same sea-shore.
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There is not one talent for living and another for creating. The same suffices for both. And one can be sure that the talent that could not produce but an artificial work could not sustain but a frivolous life.
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No excuses ever, for anyone; that is my principle at the outset. I deny the good intention, the respectable mistake, the indiscretion, the extenuating circumstance. With me there is no giving of absolution or blessing.
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Because there is nothing here than invites us to cherish unhappy lovers. Nothing is more vain than to die for love. What we ought to do is live.
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A man wants to earn money in order to be happy, and his whole effort and the best of a life are devoted to the earning of that money. Happiness is forgotten; the means are taken for the end.
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There is no shame in preferring happiness.
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I had only a little time left and I didn't want to waste it on God.
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We are all special cases.
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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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Men die and they are not happy.
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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.
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Fancy language, like poplin, too often conceals an eczema.
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Revolution, in order to be creative, cannot do without either a moral or metaphysical rule to balance the insanity of history.
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To write is to become disinterested. There is a certain renunciation in art.
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On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness.
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When I see a new face, something sets off an alarm bell inside me. 'slow down! Danger!' Even when the attraction is strongest, I am on my guard.