Albert Camus Quotes
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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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So all a man could win in the conflict between plague and life was knowledge and memories.
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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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Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure.
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Man is an idea, and a precious small idea once he turns his back on love.
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If we understood the enigmas of life there would be no need for art.
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If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.
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We turn toward God only to obtain the impossible.
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Your success and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them. But to be happy it is essential not to be too concerned with others. Consequently, there is no escape. Happy and judged, or absolved and wretched.
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It is better for the intellectual not to talk all the time. To begin with, it would exhaust him, and, above all, it would keep him from thinking. He must create if he can, first and foremost, especially if his creation does not side-step the problems of his time.
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It is terrifying to see how easily, in certain people, all dignity collapses. Yet when you think about it, this is quite normal since they only maintain this dignity by constantly striving against their own nature.
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Nothing in life is worth, turning your back on, if you love it.
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Morality, when formal, devours.
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A liking for truth at any cost is a passion that spares nothing and that nothing resists. It's a vice, at times a comfort, or a selfishness.
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Camus himself described this work as 'an attempt to understand the time I live in'.
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At one time or another all normal people have wished their loved ones were dead.
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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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We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives... inside ourselves.
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There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.
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I know myself too well to believe in pure virtue.
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At the age of 40, having ordered meat very rare in restaurants all his life, he realized he actually liked it medium and not at all rare.
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Over there, in Europe, all was shame and anger. Here it was exile or solitude, among these languid and agitated madmen who danced in order to die.
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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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And so I learned that familiar paths traced in the dusk of summer evenings may lead as well to prison as to innocent untroubled sleep.