Albert Camus Quotes
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Men and women consume one another rapidly in what is called "the act of love," or else settle down to a mild habit of conjugality. We seldom find a mean between these two extremes.
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If I convince myself that this life has no other aspect than that of the absurd, if I feel that its whole equilibrium depends on that perpetual opposition between my conscious revolt and the darkness in which it struggles, if I admit that my freedom has no meaning except in relation to its limited fate, then I must say that what counts is not the best living but the most living.
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The absurd has meaning only in so far as it is not agreed to.
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I realized people would soon forget me once I was dead. I couldn't even say that this was hard to stomach; really, there's no idea to which one doesn't get acclimatized in time.
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We are all special cases.
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I know myself too well to believe in pure virtue.
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I have a good, hearty laugh and an energetic handshake, and those are trump cards.
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Yes, everything is simple. It's people who complicate things.
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In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.
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Conscious of not being able to separate myself from my time, I have decided to become part of it.
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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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False judges are held up in the world's admiration and I alone know the true ones.
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And real nobility (that of the heart) is based on scorn, courage, and profound indifference.
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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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It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.
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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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There can be no question of masking the evidence, of suppressing the absurd by denying one of the terms of its equation. It is essential to know whether one can live with it or whether, on the other hand, logic commands one to die of it.
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No matter how the sun shone, the sea held forth no more promises.
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Holland is a dream, Monsieur, a dream of gold and smoke-smokier by day, more gilded by night. And night and day that dream is peopled with Lohengrins like these, dreamily riding their black bicycles with high handle-bars, funereal swans constantly drifting throughout the whole country, around the seas, along the canals.
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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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Just as all thought, and primarily that of non-signification, signifies something, so there is no art that has no signification.
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All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it's up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences. That may sound simple to the point of childishness; I can't judge if it's simple, but I know it's true.
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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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The struggle to reach the top is itself enough to fulfill the heart of man. One must believe that Sisyphus is happy.