Albert Camus Quotes
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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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... here, where the gaze is stopped everywhere, the whole earth is designed so that the face turns upward and the gaze implores. Oh! I hate this world where we are reduced to God.
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Yes, I'm happy, in human terms.
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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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One of the only coherent philosophical positions is thus revolt. It is a constant confrontation between man and his own obscurity.
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The world expects of Christians that they will raise their voices so loudly and clearly and so formulate their protest that not even the simplest man can have the slightest doubt about what they are saying. Further, the world expects of Christians that they will eschew all fuzzy abstractions and plant themselves squarely in front of the bloody face of history. We stand in need of folk who have determined to speak directly and unmistakably and come what may, to stand by what they have said.
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You know, women do not really condemn any weakness: rather, they try to humiliate or disarm our strengths. That is why women arethe reward, not of the warrior, but of the criminal.
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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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Everything is true, and nothing is true!
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There is a solitude in poverty, but a solitude which restores to each thing its value.
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Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil.
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What did it matter if he existed for two or for twenty years? Happiness was the fact that he had existed.
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The most loathsome materialism is not the kind people usually think of, but the sort that attempts to let dead ideas pass for living realities, diverting into sterile myths the stubborn and lucid attention we give to what we have within us that must forever die.
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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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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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We don't have the time to completely be ourselves. We only have the room to be happy.
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Who taught you all this, doctor?" The reply came promptly: "Suffering.
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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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Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.
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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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I have a very old and very faithful attachment for dogs. I like them because they always forgive.
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The only way out of international dictatorship is to place international law above governments, which means that there must be a parliament for making it, and that parliament must be constituted by means of worldwide elections in which all nations will take part.
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These are facts the heart can feel; yet they call for careful study before they become clear to the intellect.
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On certain mornings, as we turn a corner, an exquisite dew falls on our heart and then vanishes. But the freshness lingers, and this, always, is what the heart needs. The earth must have risen in just such a light the morning the world was born.