Albert Camus Quotes
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I know of only one duty, and that is to love.
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The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.
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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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Marxism is not scientific: at the best, it has scientific prejudices.
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But again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. The schoolteacher is well aware of this. And the question is not one of knowing what punishment or reward attends the making of this calculation. The question is one of knowing whether two and two do make four.
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In every guilty man, there is some innocence. This makes every absolute condemnation revolting.
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Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified at having, for years, heard nothing which sounded human. It is always the same words telling the same lies. And the fact that men accept this, that the people’s anger has not destroyed these hollow clowns, strikes me as proof that men attribute no importance to the way they are governed; that they gamble – yes, gamble – with a whole part of their life and their so called 'vital interests.
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We can't do without dominating others or being served.... The essential thing, in sum, is being able to get angry without the other person being able to answer back.
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All men have a sweetness in their life. That is what helps them go on. It is towards that they turn when they feel too worn out.
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I have a good, hearty laugh and an energetic handshake, and those are trump cards.
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Being is good, but getting rich is better.... If the gods had only the riches of men's adoration, they would be as poor as poor Caligula.
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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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Men die and they are not happy.
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Am well. Thinking of you always. Love.
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Have you no hope at all? And do you really live with the thought that when you die, you die, and nothing remains?" "Yes," I said.
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We spend our days in deliberating, and we end them without coming to any resolve.
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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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Truth is not a virtue, but a passion. It is never charitable.
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Thinking of the future, establishing aims for oneself, having preferences-all this presupposes a belief in freedom, even if one occasionally ascertains that one doesn't feel it.
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Liberty is a choreand a long-distance race, quite solitary, quite exhausting.
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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.
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Thoughts of suicide have got me through many a bad night.
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You have to be very rich or very poor to live without a trade.
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There are means that cannot be excused. And I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice. I don't want just any greatness for it, particularly a greatness born of blood and falsehood. I want to keep it alive by keeping justice alive.