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Since the order of the world is shaped by death, mightn't it be better for God if we refuse to believe in Him, and struggle with all our might against death without raising our eyes towards the heaven where He sits in silence?
Albert Camus -
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.
Albert Camus
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To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.
Albert Camus -
Happiness is generous. It does not subsist on destruction.
Albert Camus -
You make the mistake of thinking you have to choose, that you have to do what you want, that there are conditions for happiness. What matters — all that matters, really is the will to happiness, a kind of enormous, ever present consciousness. The rest - women , art, success — is nothing but excuses. A canvas waiting for our embroideries.
Albert Camus -
The more I produce, the less I am certain. On the road along which the artist walks, night falls ever more densely. Finally, he dies blind.
Albert Camus -
It's a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.
Albert Camus -
You know, a man always judges himself by the balance he can strike between the needs of his body and the demands of his mind. You're judging yourself now, Mersaut, and you don't like the sentence.
Albert Camus
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One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves.
Albert Camus -
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.
Albert Camus -
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.
Albert Camus -
Men are convinced of your arguments, your sincerity, and the seriousness of your efforts only by your death.
Albert Camus -
The absurd has meaning only in so far as it is not agreed to.
Albert Camus -
Europe has lived on its contradictions, flourished on its differences, and, constantly transcending itself thereby, has created a civilization on which the whole world depends even when rejecting it. This is why I do not believe in a Europe unified under the weight of an ideology or of a technocracy that overlooked these differences.
Albert Camus
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But when a man has had only four hours' sleep he isn't sentimental. He sees things as they are: that is to say, he sees them in the garish light of justice; hideous, witless justice.
Albert Camus -
Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.
Albert Camus -
We don't have the time to completely be ourselves. We only have the room to be happy.
Albert Camus -
It's not the struggle that makes us artists, but Art that makes us struggle.
Albert Camus -
But do you know why we are always more just and generous toward the dead? The reason is simple. With them there is no obligation. They leave us free and we can take our time, fit the testimonial between a cocktail party and a nice little mistress, in our spare time, in short.
Albert Camus -
Many artists, even the greatest ones, are not sure of their own existence. So they search for proof, they judge, they condemn. It strengthens them, it is the beginnings of existence. They are alone!
Albert Camus
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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.
Albert Camus -
Every man, and for stronger reasons, every artist, wants to be recognized. So do I.
Albert Camus -
Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable.
Albert Camus -
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.
Albert Camus