Albert Camus Quotes
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To lose one's life is no great matter; when the time comes I'll have the courage to lose mine. But what's intolerable is to see one's life being drained of meaning, to be told there's no reason for existing. A man can't live without some reason for living.
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All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant's revolving door.
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In fact, other people create for lack of power. I, on the other hand, do not need a work: I live.
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I used to advertise my loyalty and I don't believe there is a single person I loved that I didn't eventually betray.
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This world, such as it is, is not tolerable. Therefore I need the moon, or happiness, or immortality, I need something which is perhaps demented, but which is not of this world.
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When I was young I asked more of people than they could give: everlasting friendship, endless feeling. Now I know to ask less of them than they can give: a straightforward companionship. And their feelings, their friendship, their generous actions seem in my eyes to be wholly miraculous: a consequence of grace alone.
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That must be wonderful; I have no idea of what it means.
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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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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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The mistake that men make is that they do not believe in theater. Otherwise, they would know that every man is allowed to play thecelestial tragedies and to become god. All he has to do is harden his heart.
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Happiness too is inevitable.
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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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We have art in order not to die of life.
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It is in the thick of calamity that one gets hardened to the truth - in other words, to silence.
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It is better to burn than to disappear.
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The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment, it is all that links them together.
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Nature is a burning and frigid, transparent and limited universe in which nothing is possible but everything is given.
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Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself.
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We call first truths those we discover after all the others.
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The only way out of international dictatorship is to place international law above governments, which means that there must be a parliament for making it, and that parliament must be constituted by means of worldwide elections in which all nations will take part.
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A true masterpiece does not tell everything.
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Have pity, Lord, on those who love and are separated.
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An achievement is a bondage. It obliges one to a higher achievement.
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Ah cher ami, how poor in invention men are! They are They always think one commits suicide for a reason. But it's quite possible to commit suicide for two reasons. No, that never occurs to them. So what's the good of dying intentionally, of sacrificing yourself to the idea you want people to have of you? Once you are dead, they will take advantage of it to attribute idiotic or vulgar motives to your action. Martyrs, cher ami, must choose between being forgotten, mocked, or made use of. As for being understood--never!