Albert Camus Quotes
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We call first truths those we discover after all the others.
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I know of only one duty, and that is to love.
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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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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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By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.
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The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning.
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A true masterpiece does not tell everything.
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We come into the world laden with the weight of an infinite necessity.
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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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You know very well that I no longer think. I am far too intelligent for that.
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The society based on production is only productive, not creative.
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At that time, I often thought that if I had had to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but look up at the sky flowing overhead, little by little I would have gotten used to it.
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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!
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Love is the kind of illness that does not spare the intelligent or the dull.
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There is not one talent for living and another for creating. The same suffices for both. And one can be sure that the talent that could not produce but an artificial work could not sustain but a frivolous life.
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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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So all a man could win in the conflict between plague and life was knowledge and memories.
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But it's not easy. I've been thinking it over for years. While we loved each other we didn't need words to make ourselves understood. But people don't love forever. A time came when I should have found the words to keep her with me, only I couldn't.
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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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The only serious question in life is whether to kill yourself or not.
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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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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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The entire history of mankind is, in any case, nothing but a prolonged fight to the death for the conquest of universal prestige and absolute power.