Albert Camus Quotes
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I felt as though I was partly unlearning what i had never learned and yet knew so well: I mean, how to live.
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We call first truths those we discover after all the others.
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You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.
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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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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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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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But who would dare condemn me in this world with no judges, where no one is innocent!
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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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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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The principles which men give to themselves end by overwhelming their noblest intentions.
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Some are created to love, while the others – to live.
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To understand one's world, one must sometimes turn away from it! To serve better, one must briefly hold it at a distance. Where can the necessary solitude be found, the long breathing space in which mind gathers its strength and takes stock of its courage.
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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 comfortable in all, I admit, but at the same time, nothing satisfied me. Each joy made me seek another.
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Without freedom there is no art.
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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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When silence or tricks of language contribute to maintaining an abuse that must be reformed or a suffering that can be relieved, then there is no other solution but to speak out and show the obscenity hidden under the verbal cloak.
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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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We do not know how to eliminate evil, but we do know how to feed some of the hungry and heal some of the infirmed.
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At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman.
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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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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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Life can be magnificent and overwhelming -- that is the whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would almost be easy to live.
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In Italian museums are sometimes found little painted screens that the priest used to hold in front of the face of condemned men to hide the scaffold from them.