Albert Camus Quotes
-
The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding.
-
For the first time in a long time I thought about Maman. I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a 'fiancé,' why she had played at beginning again. Even there, in that home where lives were fading out, evening was a kind of wistful respite. So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again. Nobody, nobody had the right to cry over her. And I felt ready to live it all again too.
-
Liberty is the right not to lie.
-
A person I knew used to divide human beings into three categories: those who prefer to have nothing to hide rather than being obliged to lie, those who prefer lying to having nothing to hide, and finally those who like both lying and the hidden.
-
That must be wonderful; I have no idea of what it means.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Any country where I am not bored is a country that teaches me nothing.
-
Without freedom there is no art.
-
Proof is never definitive, after all; one has to begin again with each new person.
-
In a world that has ceased to believe in sin, the artist is responsible for the preaching.
-
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.
-
For me, physical love has always been bound to an irresistible feeling of innocence and joy. Thus, I cannot love in tears but in exaltation.
-
It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life had to have a meaning to be lived. It now becomes clear on the contrary that it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning.
-
To me, art is not a solitary delight. It is a means of stirring the greatest number of men by providing them with a privileged image of our common joys and woes.
-
For instance, I never complained that my birthday was overlooked; people were even surprised, with a touch of admiration, by my discretion on this subject. But the reason for my disinterestedness was even more discreet: I longed to be forgotten in order to be able to complain to myself... Once my solitude was thoroughly proved, I could surrender to the charms of a virile self-pity.
-
There is no shame in preferring happiness.
-
If pimps and thieves everywhere were always punished, honest people would all believe themselves always to be innocent.
-
A trial cannot be conducted by announcing the general culpability of a civilization. Only the actual deeds which, at least, stank in the nostrils of the entire world were brought to judgment.
-
The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious.
-
The most exhausting effort in my life has been to suppress my own nature in order to make it serve my biggest plans.
-
Whereas the Greeks gave to will the boundaries of reason, we have come to put the will's impulse in the very center of reason, which has, as a result, become deadly.
-
Happiness too is inevitable.
-
Yes, I'm happy, in human terms.