Albert Camus Quotes
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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 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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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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People believe a man is in distress because his loved one dies in one day. But his real pain is less futile: it is that he finds out that sadness too does not last. Even pain has no meaning.
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I would rather not have upset him, but I couldn't see any reason to change my life. Looking back on it, I wasn't unhappy. When I was a student, I had lots of ambitions like that. But when I had to give up my studies I learned very quickly that none of it really mattered.
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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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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.
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There is always a philosophy for lack of courage.
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The greatness of man lies in his decision to be stronger than his condition.
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Without freedom there is no art.
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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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God is not necessary to create culpability, or to punish. Our fellow men are enough for that, helped by ourselves.
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Myths are made for the imagination to breath life into them.
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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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For ever, I shall be a stranger to myself.
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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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Greatness consists in trying to be great. There is no other way.
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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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Truth and freedom, having few lovers, are demanding mistresses.
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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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These are facts the heart can feel; yet they call for careful study before they become clear to the intellect.
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Accept life, take it as it is? Stupid. The means of doing otherwise? Far from our having to take it, it is life that possesses us and on occasion shuts our mouths.
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I sometimes need to write things which I cannot completely control but which therefore prove that what is in me is stronger than I am.