Albert Camus Quotes
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One recognizes one's course by discovering the paths that stray from it.
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Great ideas, it has been said, come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear amid the uproar of empires and nations, a faint flutter of wings, the gentle stirring of life and hope. Some will say that this hope lies in a nation; others in a man. I believe rather that it is awakened, revived, nourished, by millions of solitary individuals whose and works every day negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history.
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If the world were clear, art would not exist.
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I draw from the Absurd three consequences: my revolt, my liberty, my passion.
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There lay certitude; there, in the daily round. All the rest hung on mere threads and trivial contingencies; you couldn't waste your time on it. The thing was to do your job as it should be done.
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For anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful. Hence one must choose a master, God being out of style.
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In our well-policed society we recognize that an illness is serious from the fact that we don't dare speak of it directly.
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Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature.
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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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We are living in the era of premeditation and the perfect crime. Our criminals are no longer helpless children who could plead love as their excuse. On the contrary, they are adults and the have the perfect alibi: philosophy, which can be used for any purpose - even for transforming murderers into judges.
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Nothing is harder to understand than a symbolic work. A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing.
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I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn't mine anymore, but one in which I'd found the simplest and most lasting joys.
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Yes, there was an element of abstraction and unreality in misfortune. But when an abstraction starts to kill you, you have to get to work on it.
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It is immoral not to tell.
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What gives value to travel is fear. It is a fact that, at a certain moment, when we are so far from our own country, we are seized by a vague fear and an instinctive desire to go back to the protection of old habits. I look upon it more as an occasion for testing.
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Nihilism is not only despair and negation, but above all the desire to despair and to negate.
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There is no mystery in humans creation. Will performs this miracle. But at least there is no true creation without a secret.
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Rebellion, in man, is the refusal to be treated as an object and to be reduced to simple historical terms. It is the affirmation of a nature common to all men, which eludes the world of power.
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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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What is a firm hand to me, of what use to me is this astonishing power if I cannot change the order of things, if I cannot make the sun set in the east, that suffering diminish and that beings no longer die?
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The rebel can never find peace. He knows what is good and, despite himself, does evil. The value which supports him is never given to him once and for all - he must fight to uphold it, unceasingly.
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A punishment that penalizes without forestalling is indeed called revenge.
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I hope the dogs don't bark tonight. I always think it's mine.
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The greatest saving one can make in the order of thought is to accept the unintelligibility of the world - and to pay attention to man.