Albert Camus Quotes
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He marveled at the strange blindness by which men, though they are so alert to what changes in themselves, impose on their friends an image chosen for them once and for all. He was being judged by what he had been. Just as dogs don't change character, men are dogs to one another.
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The ancients, even though they believed in destiny, believed primarily in nature, in which they participated wholeheartedly. To rebel against nature amounted to rebelling against oneself. It was butting one's head against a wall.
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Yes, I know what passion would fill me with all its power. Before, I was too young. I got in the way. Now I know that acting and loving and suffering is living, of course, but it’s only living insofar as you can be transparent and accept your fate, like the unique reflection of a rainbow of joys and passions which is the same for everyone.
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To cut short this question of the law of retaliation, we must note that even in its primitive form it can operate only between two individuals of whom one is absolutely innocent and the other absolutely guilty. The victim, to be sure, is innocent. But can the society that is supposed to represent the victim lay claim to innocence?
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There will be no lasting peace either in the heart of individuals or in social customs until death is outlawed.
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Why must one love rarely to love well?
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When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
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Sometimes, carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement.
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One recognizes one's course by discovering the paths that stray from it.
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The desire for possession is insatiable, to such a point that it can survive even love itself. To love, therefore, is to sterilize the person one loves.
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People have played on words and pretended to believe that refusing to grant a meaning to life necessarily leads to declaring that it is not worth living. In truth, there is no necessary common measure between these two judgments.
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She was waiting, but she didn't know for what. She was aware only of her solitude, and of the penetrating cold, and of a greater weight in the region of her heart.
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Their guilt made me eloquent because I was not its victim.
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Great novelists are philosopher novelists - that is, the contrary of thesis-writers.
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There always comes a time when one must choose between contemplation and action. This is called becoming a man.
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…. Query: How contrive not to waste one's time? Answer: By being fully aware of it all the while. Ways in which this can be done: By spending one's days on an uneasy chair in a dentist's waiting-room; by remaining on one's balcony all of a Sunday afternoon; by listening to lectures in a language on doesn't know; by traveling by the longest and least-convenient train routes, and of course standing all the way; by lining up at the box-office of theaters and then not buying a seat; and so forth.
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The opposite of an idealist is too often a man without love.
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Knowing that certain nights whose sweetness lingers will keep returning to the earth and sea after we are gone, yes, this helps us to die.
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One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
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No doubt our love was still there, but quite simply it was unusable, heavy to carry, inert inside of us, sterile as crime or condemnation. It was no longer anything except a patience with no future and a stubborn wait.
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What the world expects of Christians is that Christians should speak out, loud and clear... in such a way that never a doubt, never the slightest doubt, could rise in the heart of the simplest man.
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I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't.
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The truth is that nothing is less sensational than pestilence, and by reason of their very duration great misfortunes are monotonous.
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Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature.