Albert Camus Quotes
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“To think the way you do,” he said smiling, “you have to be a man who lives either on a tremendous despair, or on a tremendous hope.” “On both, perhaps.”
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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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Freedom is not a gift received from the State or leader, but a possession to be won every day by the effort of each and the union of all.
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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 have always felt I lived on the high seas, threatened, at the heart of a royal happiness.
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One cannot be a part-time nihilist.
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We are not certain, we are never certain. If we were we could reach some conclusions, and we could, at last, make others take us seriously.
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When the body is sad, the heart languishes.
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Once crime was as solitary as a cry of protest; now it is as universal as science. Yesterday it was put on trial; today it determines the law.
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I know that man is capable of great deeds. But if he isn't capable of great emotion, well, he leaves me cold.
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The reasoning is classic in its clarity. If God does not exist, Kirilov is god. If God does not exist, Kirilov must kill himself. Kirilov must therefore kill himself to become god. That logic is absurd, but it is what is needed.
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Men who have greatness within them don't go in for politics.
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Every man, and for stronger reasons, every artist, wants to be recognized. So do I.
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Greatness consists in trying to be great. There is no other way.
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Because,' Cormery went on, 'when I was very young, very foolish, and very much alone ... you paid attention to me and, without seeming to, you opened for me the door to everything I love in the world.
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In default of inexhaustible happiness, eternal suffering would at least give us a destiny. But we do not even have that consolation, and our worst agonies come to an end one day.
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There is not a single true work of art that has not in the end added to the inner freedom insight and life of each person who has known and loved it.
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Indeed, men never know how to love. nothing satisfies them. All they know is to dream, to imagine new duties, to look for new countries and new homes. While we women, we know that we must hasten to love, to share the same bed, hold hands, and fear absence. When we women love, we dream of nothing.
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You have so much inside you, and the noblest happiness of all. Don’t just wait for a man to come along. That’s the mistake so many women make. Find your happiness in yourself.
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May heaven protect us, cher monsieur, from being set on a pedestal by our friends!!!
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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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If absolute truth belongs to anyone in this world, it certainly does not belong to the man or party that claims to possess it.
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For ever, I shall be a stranger to myself.
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This very heart which is mine will forever remain indefinable to me. Between the certainty I have of my existence and the content I try to give to that assurance, the gap will never be filled. Forever I shall be a stranger to myself.