Albert Camus Quotes
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In a world that has ceased to believe in sin, the artist is responsible for the preaching.
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Once in the midst of a seemingly endless winter, I discovered within myself an invincible spring.
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Turbulent childhood, adolescent daydreams in the drone of the bus's motor, mornings, unspoiled girls, beaches, young muscles always at the peak of their effort, evening's slight anxiety in a sixteen-year-old-heart, lust for life, fame, and ever the same sky through the years, unfailing in strength and light, itself insatiable, consuming one by one over a period of months the victims stretched out in the form of crosses on the beach at the deathlike hour of noon.
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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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The struggle to reach the top is itself enough to fulfill the heart of man. One must believe that Sisyphus is happy.
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But who would dare condemn me in this world with no judges, where no one is innocent!
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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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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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I was born poor and without religion, under a happy sky, feeling harmony, not hostility, in nature. I began not by feeling torn, but in plenitude.
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Yes, I'm happy, in human terms.
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Proof is never definitive, after all; one has to begin again with each new person.
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The principle can be established that for a man who does not cheat what he believes to be true must determine his actions.
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When I look at my life and its secret colors, I feel like bursting into tears.
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We have art in order not to die of life.
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Nothing is given to mankind and what little men can conquer must be paid for with unjust death. But man's grandeur lies elsewhere, in his decision to rise above his condition.
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Have pity, Lord, on those who love and are separated.
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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.
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The current motto for all of us can only be this: without giving up anything on the plane of justice, yield nothing on the plane of freedom.
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Powerful, yes, that is the word that I constantly rolled on my tongue, I dreamed of absolute power, the kind that forces others tokneel, that forces the enemy to capitulate, finally converting him, and the more the enemy is blind, cruel, sure of himself, buried in his conviction, the more his admission proclaims the royalty of he who has brought on his defeat.
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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.
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Ah! my friend, for whomever is alone, without a god and without a master, the weight of time is terrible. One must then choose a master, God being out of style.
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Freedom is not a reward or a decoration that you toast in champagne. On the contrary, it's hard graft and a long-distance run, all alone, very exhausting. Alone in a dreary room, alone in the dock before the judges, and alone to make up your mind, before yourself and before the judgement of others. At the end of every freedom there is a sentence, which is why freedom is too heavy to bear.
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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.
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Some are created to love, while the others – to live.