Albert Camus Quotes
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Have pity, Lord, on those who love and are separated.
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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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The first choice an artist makes is precisely to be an artist, and if he chooses to be an artist it is in consideration of what he is himself and because of a certain idea he has of art.
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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.
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One plays at being immortal and after a few weeks one doesn't even know whether or not one can hang on till the next day.
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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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To abandon oneself to principles is really to die – and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love.
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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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Revolt and revolution both wind up at the same crossroads: the police, or folly.
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One grows out of pity when it's useless.
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No matter how the sun shone, the sea held forth no more promises.
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Love is the kind of illness that does not spare the intelligent or the dull.
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Am well. Thinking of you always. Love.
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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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The current motto for all of us can only be this: without giving up anything on the plane of justice, yield nothing on the plane of freedom.
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I am too much in love with my lies and hypocrisies not to confess them fervently.
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There are always reasons for murdering a man. But there is no justification for his existence.
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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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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 Plague")
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If we understood the enigmas of life there would be no need for art.
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For what gives value to travel is fear. It breaks down a kind of inner structure we have. Travel robs us of such refuge. Far from our own people, our own language, stripped of all our props, deprived of our masks (one doesn't know the fare on the streetcars, or anything else), we are completely on the surface of ourselves.
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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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Big tears of frustration and exhaustion were streaming down his cheeks. But because of all the wrinkles, they weren't dripping off. They spread out and ran together again, leaving a watery film over his ruined face.