Albert Camus Quotes
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You know very well that I no longer think. I am far too intelligent for that.
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At one time or another all normal people have wished their loved ones were dead.
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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.
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I felt as I hadn't felt for ages. I had a foolish desire to burst into tears. for the first time I'd realized how all these people loathed me.
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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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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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In truth, I was so good at being a man, with such plenitude and simplicity, that I thought I was something of a superman.
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We call first truths those we discover after all the others.
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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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A man is more a man through the things he keeps to himself than through those he says.
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The society based on production is only productive, not creative.
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We come into the world laden with the weight of an infinite necessity.
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The sense of doing good , the satisfaction of being right, the joy of looking favorably upon oneself, dear sir, are powerful levers for keeping us upright and making us progress. On the other hand, if men are deprived of that feeling, they are changed into rabid dogs.
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The only serious question in life is whether to kill yourself or not.
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The best are led to make greater demands upon themselves. As for those who succumb, they did not deserve to survive.
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Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.
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If pimps and thieves everywhere were always punished, honest people would all believe themselves always to be innocent.
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I would like to be able to breathe— to be able to love her by memory or fidelity. But my heart aches. I love you continuously, intensely.
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God is not necessary to create culpability, or to punish. Our fellow men are enough for that, helped by ourselves.
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There is no shame in preferring happiness.
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Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.
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We can't do without dominating others or being served.... The essential thing, in sum, is being able to get angry without the other person being able to answer back.
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Don't believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves.
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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.