Albert Camus Quotes

Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend. Albert Camus You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. Albert Camus In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. Albert Camus Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is. Albert Camus Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. Albert Camus Live to the point of tears. Albert Camus You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question. Albert Camus, The Fall Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee? Albert Camus Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken. Albert Camus There are causes worth dying for, but none worth killing for. Albert Camus

An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. "Can they be brought together?" This is a practical question. We must get down to it. "I despise intelligence" really means: "I cannot bear my doubts. Albert Camus At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman. Albert Camus The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. Albert Camus To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others. Albert Camus The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself. Albert Camus Do not wait for the last judgment. It comes every day. Albert Camus Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower. Albert Camus But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself. Albert Camus I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist. Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959 Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth. Albert Camus When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune. Albert Camus, The First Man I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Albert Camus, L'etranger I have no idea what's awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing. Albert Camus, The Stranger Always go too far, because that's where you'll find the truth Albert Camus Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

I would rather live my life as if there is a god and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is. Albert Camus It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners. Albert Camus You can't create experience, you undergo it. Albert Camus I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't. Albert Camus, The Stranger I used to advertise my loyalty and I don't believe there is a single person I loved that I didn't eventually betray. Albert Camus, The Fall In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion. Albert Camus I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. Albert Camus What is a rebel? A man who says no. Albert Camus Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present. Albert Camus I had only a little time left and I didn't want to waste it on God. Albert Camus, L'etranger Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre. Albert Camus People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves. Albert Camus, The Fall Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better. Albert Camus A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened. Albert Camus

Always there comes an hour when one is weary of one's work and devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart. Albert Camus A loveless world is a dead world. Albert Camus She was breathing deeply, she forgot the cold, the weight of beings, the insane or static life, the long anguish of living or dying. After so many years running from fear, fleeing crazily, uselessly, she was finally coming to a halt. At the same time she seemed to be recovering her roots, and the sap rose anew in her body, which was no longer trembling. Pressing her whole belly against the parapet, leaning toward the wheeling sky, she was only waiting for her pounding heart to settle down, and for the silence to form in her. The last constellations of stars fell in bunches a little lower on the horizon of the desert, and stood motionless. Then, with an unbearable sweetness, the waters of the night began to fill her, submerging the cold, rising gradually to the center of her being, and overflowing wave upon wave to her moaning mouth. A moment later, the whole sky stretched out above her as she lay with her back against the cold earth. Albert Camus Life can be magnificent and overwhelming -- that is the whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would almost be easy to live. Albert Camus Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it. Albert Camus We are all special cases. Albert Camus Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays We all carry within us places of exile, our crimes, our ravages. Our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to transform them in ourselves and others. Albert Camus She was wearing a pair of my pajamas with the sleeves rolled up. When she laughed I wanted her again. A minute later she asked me if I loved her. I told her it didn't mean anything but that I didn't think so. She looked sad. But as we were fixing lunch, and for no apparent reason, she laughed in such a way that I kissed her. Albert Camus Peace is the only battle worth waging. Albert Camus The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth. Albert Camus

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time. Albert Camus For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life. Albert Camus Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified at having, for years, heard nothing which sounded human. It is always the same words telling the same lies. And the fact that men accept this, that the peoples anger has not destroyed these hollow clowns, strikes me as proof that men attribute no importance to the way they are governed; that they gamble yes, gamble with a whole part of their life and their so called 'vital interests. Albert Camus There are crimes of passion and crimes of logic. The boundary between them is not clearly defined. Albert Camus A person's life purpose is nothing more than to rediscover, through the detours of art or love or passionate work, those one or two images in the presence of which his heart first opened. Albert Camus There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer. Albert Camus It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I'd been happy, and that I was happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration. Albert Camus, The Stranger There is not love of life without despair about life. Albert Camus, The Stranger Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being. Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt I know that man is capable of great deeds. But if he isn't capable of great emotion, well, he leaves me cold. Albert Camus, The Plague

The evil that is in the world almost always comes from ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding. Albert Camus The need to be right - the sign of a vulgar mind. Albert Camus Nothing in life is worth, turning your back on, if you love it. Albert Camus If something is going to happen to me, I want to be there. Albert Camus, The Stranger Friendship is less simple. It is long and hard to obtain but when one has it there's no getting rid of it; one simply has to cope with it. Don't think for a minute that your friends will telephone you every evening, as they ought to, in order to find out if this doesn't happen to be the evening when you are deciding to commit suicide, or simply whether you don't need company, whether you are not in the mood to go out. No, don't worry, they'll ring up the evening you are not alone, when life is beautiful. As for suicide, they would be more likely to push you to it, by virtue of what you owe to yourself, according to them. May heaven protect us, cher Monsieur, from being set upon a pedestal by our friends! Albert Camus, The Fall Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. Albert Camus Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep Albert Camus 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. Albert Camus Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose further developments, a future - and also because we live as if our only task was precisely to have relationships with other people. Albert Camus What is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid. Albert Camus What made me run away was doubtless not so much the fear of settling down, but of settling down permanently in something ugly. Albert Camus

If absolute truth belongs to anyone in this world, it certainly does not belong to the man or party that claims to possess it. Albert Camus Integrity has no need of rules. Albert Camus After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books. Albert Camus Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason. Albert Camus He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool. Albert Camus The most important thing you do everyday you live is deciding not to kill yourself. Albert Camus We must learn how to lend ourselves to dreaming when dreams lend themselves to us. Albert Camus ...the habit of despair is worse than despair itself. Albert Camus Don't lies eventually lead to the truth? And don't all my stories, true or false, tend toward the same conclusion? Don't they all have the same meaning? So what does it matter whether they are true or false if, in both cases, they are significant of what I have been and what I am? Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar than into the man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object. Albert Camus, The Fall What I'm sure of is that you can't be happy without money. That's all. I don't like superficiality and I don't like romanticism. I like to be conscious. And what I've noticed is that there's a kind of spiritual snobbism in certain 'superior beings' who think that money isn't necessary for happiness. Which is stupid, which is false, and to a certain degree cowardly.... For a man who is well born, being happy is never complicated. It's enough to take up the general fate, only not with the will for renunciation like so many fake great men, but with the will for happiness. Only it takes time to be happy. A lot of time. Happiness, too, is a long patience. And in almost every case, we use up our lives making money, when we should be using our money to gain time. That's the only problem that's ever interested me.... To have money is to have time. That's my main point. Time can be bought. Everything can be bought. To be or to become rich is to have time to be happy, if you deserve it.... Everything for happiness, against the world which surrounds us with its violence and its stupidity.... All the cruelty of our civilization can be measured by this one axiom: happy nations have no history. Albert Camus

Art and revolt will die only with the last man. Albert Camus Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death. So long as you are alive, your case is doubtful; you have a right only to their skepticism. Albert Camus, The Fall I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world. Albert Camus, The Stranger I had been right I was still right I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well lived it another. I had done this and I hadn t done that. I hadn t done this thing and I had done another. And so? Albert Camus, The Stranger The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits. Albert Camus, The Plague I know simply that the sky will last longer than I. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays It is always easy to be logical. It is almost impossible to be logical to the bitter end. Albert Camus You always get exaggerated notions about things you don't know anything about. Albert Camus But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads? Albert Camus ...we rarely confide in those who are better than we. Rather, we are more inclined to flee their society. Most often, on the other hand, we confess to those who are like us and who share our weaknesses. Hence we don't want to improve ourselves and be bettered, for we should first have to be judged in default. We merely wish to be pitied and encouraged in the course we have chosen. In short, we should like, at the same time, to cease being guilty and yet not to make the effort of cleansing ourselves. Albert Camus My chief occupation, despite appearances, has always been love. Albert Camus I shall tell you a great secret my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment, it takes place every day. Albert Camus Don't believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves. Albert Camus

There is scarcely any passion without struggle. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays All men have a sweetness in their life. That is what helps them go on. It is towards that they turn when they feel too worn out. Albert Camus Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter. Albert Camus, The Stranger We have to live and let live in order to create what we are. Albert Camus They knew now that if there is one thing one can always yearn for, and sometimes attain, it is human love. Albert Camus, The Plague And often he who has chosen the fate of the artist because he felt himself to be different soon realizes that he can maintain neither his art nor his difference unless he admits that he is like the others. The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. Albert Camus I hadn't understood how days could be both long and short at the same time: long to live through, maybe, but so drawn out that they ended up flowing into one another. They lost their names. Only 'yesterday' and 'tomorrow' still had any meaning for me. Albert Camus I had the whole sky in my eyes and it was blue and gold. Albert Camus We are all born mad, some remain so Albert Camus But, you know, I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don't really appeal to me, I imagine. What interests me is being a man. Albert Camus, The Plague Mostly, I could tell, I made him feel uncomfortable. He didn't understand me, and he was sort of holding it against me. I felt the urge to reassure him that I was like everybody else, just like everybody else. But really there wasn't much point, and I gave up the idea out of laziness. Albert Camus, L'etranger At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face. Albert Camus I continue to believe that this world has no ultimate meaning. But I know that something in it has a meaning and that is man, because he is the only creature to insist on having one Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion and Death: Essays

I love life - thats my real weakness. I love it so much that I am incapable of imagining what is not life. Albert Camus, The Fall There are means that cannot be excused. And I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice. I don't want just any greatness for it, particularly a greatness born of blood and falsehood. I want to keep it alive by keeping justice alive. Albert Camus Your success and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them. But to be happy it is essential not to be too concerned with others. Consequently, there is no escape. Happy and judged, or absolved and wretched. Albert Camus, The Fall Without work, all life goes rotten, but when work is soulless, life stifles and dies Albert Camus In different degrees, in every part of the town, men and women had been yearning for a reunion, not of the same kind for all, but for all alike ruled out. Most of them had longed intensely for an absent one, for the warmth of a body, for love, or merely a life that habit had endeared. Some, often without knowing it, suffered from being deprived of the company of friends and from their inability to get in touch with them through the usual channels of friendshipletters, trains, and boats. Others, fewer these... had desired a reunion with something they couldnt have defined, but which seemed to them the only desirable thing on earth. For want of a better name, they sometimes called it peace. Albert Camus To feel absolutely right is the beginning of the end. Albert Camus After another moment's silence she mumbled that I was peculiar, that that was probably why she loved me but that one day I might disgust her for the very same reason Albert Camus He desired her vaguely but without convinction. They walked together. He suddenly realized that she had always been very decent to him. She had accepted him as he was and had spared him a great deal of loneliness. He had been unfair: while his imagination and vanity had given her too much importance, his pride had given her too little. He discovered the cruel paradox by which we always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love -- first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage. Today he understood that she had been genuine with him -- that she had been what she was, and that he owed her a good deal. Albert Camus Believe me, for certain men at least, not taking what one doesn't desire is the hardest thing in the world. Albert Camus, The Fall All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant's revolving door. Albert Camus

True generosity toward the future consists in giving everything to the present. Albert Camus I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L'Illustration. Something desperate, you know. Albert Camus, A Happy Death Every revolutionary ends up either by becoming an oppressor or a heretic. Albert Camus I rebel; therefore I exist. Albert Camus Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity. Albert Camus We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives... inside ourselves. Albert Camus Today we are always as ready to judge as we are to fornicate. Albert Camus, The Fall Have you no hope at all? And do you really live with the thought that when you die, you die, and nothing remains?" "Yes," I said. Albert Camus, The Stranger The absurd is lucid reason noting its limits. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays It was in Spain that [my generation] learned that one can be right and yet be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, that there are times when courage is not its own recompense. It is this, doubtless, which explains why so many, the world over, feel the Spanish drama as a personal tragedy. Albert Camus If there were a party of those who aren't sure they're right, I'd belong to it. ~(Camus, as quoted by Tony Judt) Albert Camus 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 For who would dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for a single moment's human suffering Albert Camus, The Plague Here lives a free man. Nobody serves him. Albert Camus

Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure. Albert Camus, The Stranger Rule: Start by looking for what is valid in every man. Albert Camus, Notebooks, 1935 1942 Believe me, religions are on the wrong track the moment they moralize and fulminate commandments. God is not needed to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men suffice, aided by ourselves. Albert Camus I've never really had much of an imagination. But still I would try to picture the exact moment when the beating of my heart would no longer be going on inside my head. Albert Camus, The Stranger We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love - first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage. Albert Camus True debauchery is liberating because it creates no obligations. In it you possess only yourself, hence it remains the favorite pastime of the great lovers of their own person. Albert Camus You are forgiven for your happiness and your successes only if you generously consent to share them. Albert Camus I've seen of enough of people who die for an idea. I don't believe in heroism; I know it's easy and I've learned it can be murderous. What interests me is living and dying for what one loves. Albert Camus I don't want to be a genius-I have enough problems just trying to be a man. Albert Camus . 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 one 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. Albert Camus We are all exceptional cases. We all want to appeal against something! Each of us insists on being innocent at all cost, even if he has to accuse the whole human race and heaven itself. Albert Camus, The Fall

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. Albert Camus There is always a certain hour of the day and of the night when a mans courage is at its lowest ebb, and it was that hour only that he feared. Albert Camus There is no frontier between being and appearing. Albert Camus A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession. Albert Camus Thus I progressed on the surface of life, in the realm of words as it were, never in reality. All those books barely read, those friends barely loved, those cities barely visited, those women barely possessed! I went through the gestures out of boredom or absent-mindedness. Then came human beings; they wanted to cling, but there was nothing to cling to, and that was unfortunate--for them. As for me, I forgot. I never remembered anything but myself. Albert Camus, The Fall When I was young I asked more of people than they could give: everlasting friendship, endless feeling. Now I know to ask less of them than they can give: a straightforward companionship. And their feelings, their friendship, their generous actions seem in my eyes to be wholly miraculous: a consequence of grace alone. Albert Camus, The First Man I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate. Albert Camus, The Stranger Beauty, no doubt, does not make revolutions. But a day will come when revolutions will have need of beauty. Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt What really counted was the possibility of escape, a leap of freedom, out of the implacable ritual, a wild run for it that would give whatever chance for hope there was. Of course, hope meant being cut down on some street corner, as you ran like mad, by a random bullet. But when I really thought it through, nothing was going to allow me such a luxury. Everything was against it; I would just be caught up in the machinery again. Albert Camus, The Stranger Everything I know about morality and the obligations of men, I owe it to football. (soccer) Albert Camus

God is not needed to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men suffice, aided by ourselves. You were speaking of the Last Judgement. Allow me to laugh respectfully. I shall wait for it resolutely, for I have known what is worse, the judgement of men. For them, no extenuating circumstances; even the good intention is ascribed to crime. Have you at least heard of the spitting cell, which a nation recently thought up to prove itself the greatest on earth? A walled-up box in which the prisoner can stand without moving. The solid door that locks him in the cement shell stops at chin level. Hence only his face is visible, and every passing jailer spits copiously on it. The prisoner, wedged into his cell, cannot wipe his face, though he is allowed, it is true. to close his eyes. Well, that, mon cher, is a human invention. They didn't need God for that little masterpiece. Albert Camus, The Fall They came to know the incorrigible sorrow of all prisoners and exiles, which is to live in company with a memory that serves no purpose. Albert Camus life is a story and god is author.life is absurd.I think so. Albert Camus To lose one's life is no great matter; when the time comes I'll have the courage to lose mine. But what's intolerable is to see one's life being drained of meaning, to be told there's no reason for existing. A man can't live without some reason for living. Albert Camus, Caligula He discovered the cruel paradox by which we always decieve ourselves twice about the people we love-first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage Albert Camus, A Happy Death The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown. Albert Camus A man is more a man through the things he keeps to himself than through those he says. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays I knew that I had shattered the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I'd been happy. Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness. Albert Camus, The Stranger A man devoid of hope and conscious of being so has ceased to belong to the future. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays He had been bored, that's all, bored like most people. Hence he had made himself out of whole cloth a life full of complications and drama. Something must happen - and that explains most human commitments. Something must happen, even loveless slavery, even war or death. Hurray then for funerals! Albert Camus, The Fall

On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness. Albert Camus Whereas during those months of separation time had never gone quickly enough for their liking and they were wanting to speed its flight, now that they were in sight of the town they would have liked to slow it down and hold each moment in suspense, once the breaks went on and the train was entering the station. For the sensation, confused perhaps, but none the less poingant for that, of all those days and weeks and months of life lost to their love made them vaguely feel they were entitled to some compensation; this present hour of joy should run at half the speed of those long hours of waiting. Albert Camus, The Plague Without memories, without hope, they lived for the moment only. indeed, the here and now had come to mean everything to them. For there is no denying that the plague had gradually killed off in all of us the faculty not of love only but even of friendship. Naturally enough, since love asks something of the future, and nothing was left us but a series of present moments. Albert Camus At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures - be what he is. And, above all, accept these things. Albert Camus I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice. Albert Camus Liberty is the right not to lie. Albert Camus Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he. Throughout the whole absurd life I'd lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living. What did other people's deaths or a mother's love matter to me; what did his God or the lives people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we're all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people like him who also called themselves my brothers? Couldn't he see, couldn't he see that? Everybody was privileged. There were only privileged people. The others would all be condemned one day. And he would be condemned, too. Albert Camus, The Stranger I enjoyed my own nature to the fullest, and we all know there lies happiness, although, to soothe one another mutually, we occasionally pretend to condemn such joys as selfishness. Albert Camus

When a war breaks out, people say: "It's too stupid; it can't last long." But though a war may well be "too stupid," that doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves. Albert Camus At that time, I often thought that if I had had to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but look up at the sky flowing overhead, little by little I would have gotten used to it. I would have waited for the birds to fly by or the clouds to mingle, just as here I waited to see my lawyer's ties and just as, in another world, I used to wait patiently until Saturday to hold Marie's body in my arms. Now, as I think back on it, I wasn't in a hollow tree trunk. There were others worse off than me. Anyway, it was one of Maman's ideas and she often repeated it, that after awhile you could get used to anything. Albert Camus A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images. Albert Camus They hurt each other without wanting to, just because each represented to the others the cruel and demanding necessity of their lives. Albert Camus, The First Man We rarely confide in those who are better than we. Most often, on the other hand, we confess to those who are like us and who share our weaknesses. Hence we don't want to improve ourselves and be bettered, for we should first have to be judged in default. We merely wish to be pitied and encouraged in the course we have chosen. Albert Camus The absurd hero's refusal to hope becomes his singular ability to live in the present with passion. Albert Camus And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, theres something stronger something better, pushing right back. Albert Camus, The Stranger Empires and churches are born under the sun of death. Albert Camus, The Fall And indeed it could be said that once the faintest stirring of hope became possible, the dominion of plague was ended. Albert Camus, The Plague The trigger gave; I felt the smooth underside of the butt; and there, in that noise, sharp and deafening at the same time, is where it all started. I shook off the sweat and the sun. I knew that I had shattered the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I'd been happy. Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness. Albert Camus, L'etranger And then came human beings; humans wanted to cling but there was nothing to cling to. Albert Camus

Alas, after a certain age every man is responsible for his face. Albert Camus there's no question of heroism in all this. It's a matter of common decency. That's an idea which may make some people smile, but the only means of fighting a plague is - common decency. Albert Camus Poverty, first of all was never a misfortune for me; it was radiant with sunlight.. I owe it to my family, first of all, who lacked everything and who envied practically nothing. Albert Camus For there is merely bad luck in not being loved; there is misfortune in not loving. Albert Camus For the first time in a long time I thought about Maman. I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a 'fianc,' why she had played at beginning again. Even there, in that home where lives were fading out, evening was a kind of wistful respite. So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again. Nobody, nobody had the right to cry over her. And I felt ready to live it all again too. Albert Camus, The Stranger The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays I said that the world is absurd, but I was too hasty. This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart. Albert Camus Man cannot do without beauty, and this is what our era pretends to want to disregard. Albert Camus Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays Thus, I always began by assuming the worst; my appeal was dismissed. That meant, of course, I was to die. Sooner than others, obviously. 'But,' I reminded myself, 'it's common knowledge that life isn't worth living, anyhow.' And, on a wide view, I could see that it makes little difference whether one dies at the age of thirty or threescore and ten-- since, in either case, other men will continue living, the world will go on as before. Also, whether I died now or forty years hence, this business of dying had to be got through, inevitably. Albert Camus, The Stranger Happiness implied a choice, and within that choice a concerted will, a lucid desire. Only it takes time to be happy. A lot of time. Happiness, too, is a long patience Albert Camus

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. Albert Camus Ah cher ami, how poor in invention men are! They are They always think one commits suicide for a reason. But it's quite possible to commit suicide for two reasons. No, that never occurs to them. So what's the good of dying intentionally, of sacrificing yourself to the idea you want people to have of you? Once you are dead, they will take advantage of it to attribute idiotic or vulgar motives to your action. Martyrs, cher ami, must choose between being forgotten, mocked, or made use of. As for being understood--never! Albert Camus There is no fate which cannot be surmounted by scorn. Albert Camus Rebellion cannot exist without a strange form of love. Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt I'd buy myself a cabin on the beach, I'd put some glue in my navel, and I'd stick a flag in there. Then I'd wait to see which way the wind was blowing. Albert Camus But too many people now climb onto the cross merely to be seen from a greater distance, even if they have to trample somewhat on the one who has been there so long. Albert Camus, The Fall 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. Albert Camus, The Stranger maybe she had become tired of being the girlfriend of a condemned man. It also occured to me that maybe she was sick, or dead. These things happen. [...] Anyway, after that, remembering Marie meant nothing to me. That seemed perfectly normal to me, since I understood very well that people would forget me when I was dead. Albert Camus, The Stranger Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined. Society has but little connection with such beginnings. The worm is in man's heart. That is where it must be sought. One must follow and understand this fatal game that leads from lucidity in the face of existence to flight from light. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it's up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences. That may sound simple to the point of childishness; I can't judge if it's simple, but I know it's true. Albert Camus

Every stone here sweats with suffering, I know that. I have never looked at them without a feeling of anguish. But deep in my heart I know that the most wretched among you have seen a divine face emerge from their darkness. That is the face you are asked to see. Albert Camus Whatever we may do, excess will always keep its place in the heart of man, in the place where solitude is found. We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others. Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt But sometimes it takes more courage to live than to shoot yourself. Albert Camus, A Happy Death There is no longer a single idea explaining everything, but an infinite number of essences giving a meaning to an infinite number of objects. The world comes to a stop, but also lights up. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays A man wants to earn money in order to be happy, and his whole effort and the best of a life are devoted to the earning of that money. Happiness is forgotten; the means are taken for the end. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners. Albert Camus He had opened his heart to the sublime indifference of the universe Albert Camus What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is rarely a function of our true capability. It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are. Albert Camus Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others. Albert Camus If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be the history of its successive regrets and its impotences. Albert Camus Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him? Albert Camus

In normal times all of us know, whether consciously or not, that there is no love which can't be bettered; nevertheless, we reconcile ourselves more or less easily to the fact that ours has never risen above the average. Albert Camus At such moments the collapse of their courage, willpower, and endurance was so abrupt that they felt they could never drag themselves out of the pit of despond into which they had fallen. Therefore they forced themselves never to think about the problematic day of escape, to cease looking to the future, and always to keep, so to speak, their eyes fixed on the ground at their feet. But, naturally enough, this prudence, this habit of feinting with their predicament and refusing to put up a fight, was ill rewarded. For, while averting that revulsion which they found so unbearable, they also deprived themselves of those redeeming moments, frequent enough when all is told, when by conjuring up pictures of a reunion to be, they could forget about the plague. Thus, in a middle course between these heights and depths, they drifted through life rather than lived, the prey of aimless days and sterile memories, like wandering shadows that could have acquired substance only by consenting to root themselves in the solid earth of their distress. Albert Camus How could sincerity be a condition of friendship? A liking for the truth at all costs is a passion that spares nothing and that nothing can withstand. Albert Camus, The Fall I cling like a miser to the freedom that disappears as soon as there is an excess of things. Albert Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays One plays at being immortal and after a few weeks one doesn't even know whether or not one can hang on till the next day. Albert Camus, The Fall It is immoral not to tell. Albert Camus Sometimes at night I would sleep open-eyed underneath a sky dripping with stars. I was alive then. Albert Camus And he knew, also, what the old man was thinking as his tears flowed, and he, Rieux, thought it too: that a loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one's work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart. Albert Camus, The Plague There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night. Albert Camus An achievement is a bondage. It obliges one to a higher achievement. Albert Camus

I'm still of the same mind. For many years I've been ashamed, mortally ashamed, of having been, even with the best intentions, even at many removes, a murderer in my turn. As time went on, I merely learned that even those who were better than the rest could not keep themselves nowadays from killing or letting others kill, because such is the logic by which they live, and that we can't stir a finger in this world without the risk of bringing death to somebody. Yes, I've been ashamed ever since I have realized that we all have the plague, and I have lost my peace. And today I am still trying to find it; still trying to understand all those others and not to be the mortal enemy of anyone. I only know that one must do what one can to cease being plague stricken, and that's the only way in which we can hope for some peace or, failing that, a decent death. Albert Camus On moonlight nights the long, straight street and dirty white walls, nowhere darkened by the shadow of a tree, their peace untroubled by footsteps or a dog's bark, glimmered in the pale recession. The silent city was no more than an assemblage of huge, inert cubes, between which only the mute effigies of great men, carapaced in bronze, with their blank stone or metal faces, conjured up a sorry semblance of what the man had been. In lifeless squares and avenues these tawdry idols lorded it under the lowering sky; stolid monsters that might have personified the rule of immobility imposed on us, or, anyhow, its final aspect, that of a defunct city in which plague, stone, and darkness had effectively silenced every voice. Albert Camus, The Plague There was the same dazzling red glare. The sea gasped for air with each shallow, stifled wave that broke on the sand. ...with every blade of light that flashed off the sand, from a bleached shell or a peice of broken glass, my jaws tightened. I walked for a long time. Albert Camus, L'Etranger There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays There is but one true philosophical problem and that is suicide. Albert Camus stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves Albert Camus, The Plague I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying). I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions. 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, A Happy Death

Not a breath, not a soundexcept at intervals the muffled crackling of stones that the cold was reducing to sanddisturbed the solitude and silence surrounding Janine. After a moment, however, it seemed to her that the sky above her was moving in a sort of slow gyration. In the vast reaches of the dry, cold night, thousands of stars were constantly appearing, and their sparkling icicles, loosened at once, began to slip gradually towards the horizon. Janine could not tear herself away from contemplating those drifting flares. She was turning with them, and the apparently stationary progress little by little identified her with the core of her being, where cold and desire were now vying with each other. Before her the stars were falling one by one and being snuffed out among the stones of the desert, and each time Janine opened a little more to the night. Breathing deeply, she forgot the cold, the dead weight of others, the craziness or stuffiness of life, the long anguish of living and dying. After so many years of mad, aimless fleeing from fear, she had come to a stop at last. At the same time, she seemed to recover her roots and the sap again rose in her body, which had ceased trembling. Her whole belly pressed against the parapet as she strained towards the moving sky; she was merely waiting for her fluttering heart to calm down and establish silence within her. The last stars of the constellations dropped their clusters a little lower on the desert horizon and became still. Then, with unbearable gentleness, the water of night began to fill Janine, drowned the cold, rose gradually from the hidden core of her being and overflowed in wave after wave, rising up even to her mouth full of moans. The next moment, the whole sky stretched out over her, fallen on her back on the cold earth. Albert Camus, Exile and the Kingdom In this respect, our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words, they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences. A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they have taken no precautions. Albert Camus, The Plague He wasnt even sure he was alive, because he was living like a dead man. Whereas it looked as if I was the one whod come up emptyhanded. But I was sure about me, about everything, surer than he could ever be, sure of my life and sure of my death I had waiting for me I had been right, I was still right, I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I hadnt done that Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he. Throughout the whole absurd life Ive lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living. What did other peoples deaths or a mothers love matter to me; what did his God or the lives people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when were all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people like him who also called themselves my brothers? Albert Camus, The Stranger In the vast reaches of the dry, cold night, thousands of stars were constantly appearing, and their sparkling icicles, loosened at once, began to slip gradually toward the horizon. Albert Camus

Thus I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion. By the mere activity of consciousness I transform into a rule of life what was an invitation to deathand I refuse suicide. Albert Camus I explained to him, however, that my nature was such that my physical needs often got in the way of my feelings. Albert Camus, The Stranger One dies if necessary, one breaks rather than bending. But I bend, because I continue to love myself. Albert Camus No ends, simply means. Albert Camus And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness. Albert Camus, The Stranger Because there is nothing here than invites us to cherish unhappy lovers. Nothing is more vain than to die for love. What we ought to do is live. Albert Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays The truth is that every intelligent man, as you know, dreams of being a gangster and of ruling over society by force alone. As it is not so easy as the detective novels might lead one to believe, one generally relies on politics and joins the cruelest party.What does it matter, after all, if by humiliating one's mind one succeeds in dominating every one? I discovered in myself sweet dreams of oppression. Albert Camus, The Fall If Nietzsche is correct, that to shame a man is to kill him, then any honest attempt at autobiography will be an act of self-destruction. Albert Camus 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. Albert Camus, The First Man It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting. Albert Camus An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. Albert Camus To correct a natural indifference I was placed half-way between misery and the sun. Misery kept me from believing that all was well under the sun, and the sun taught me that history wasn't everything. Albert Camus

Life is a sum of all your choices". So, what are you doing today? Albert Camus Lying is not only saying what isn't true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true, and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels. Albert Camus If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy. Albert Camus I like these people swarming on the sidewalks, wedged into a little space of houses and canals, hemmed in by fogs, cold lands, and the sea streaming like a wet wash. I like them, for they are double. They are here and elsewhere. Albert Camus, The Fall The act of love is a confession. Albert Camus The only deep emotion I occasionally felt in these affairs was gratitude, when all was going well and I was left, not only peace, but freedom to come and go--never kinder and gayer with one woman than when I had just left another's bed, as if I extended to all others the debt I had just contracted toward one of them. Albert Camus, The Fall At that time, I often thought that if I had had to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but look up at the sky flowing overhead, little by little I would have gotten used to it. Albert Camus, The Stranger No excuses ever, for anyone; that is my principle at the outset. I deny the good intention, the respectable mistake, the indiscretion, the extenuating circumstance. With me there is no giving of absolution or blessing. Albert Camus, The Fall I would like to be able to breathe to be able to love her by memory or fidelity. But my heart aches. I love you continuously, intensely. Albert Camus His own faith, however, was not lacking in virtues since it consisted in acknowledging obscurely that he would be granted much without ever deserving anything. Albert Camus The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants. Albert Camus But what are a hundred million deaths? When one has served in a war, one hardly knows what a dead man is, after a while. And since a dead man has no substance unless one has actually seen him dead, a hundred million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination. Albert Camus

Autumn is a second spring where every leaf is a flower. Albert Camus Whatever prevents you from doing your work has become your work. Albert Camus Do you believe in God, doctor?" No - but what does that really mean? I'm fumbling in the dark, struggling to make something out. But I've long ceased finding that original. Albert Camus, The Plague At the age of 40, having ordered meat very rare in restaurants all his life, he realized he actually liked it medium and not at all rare. Albert Camus, The First Man Creating is living doubly. The groping, anxious quest of a Proust, his meticulous collecting of flowers, of wallpapers, and of anxieties, signifies nothing else. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays He knew now that it was his own will to happiness which must make the next move. But if he was to do so, he realized that he must come to terms with time, that to have time was at once the most magnificent and the most dangerous of experiments. Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre. Albert Camus, A Happy Death Youth is above all a collection of possibilities. Albert Camus Thinking is learning all over again how to see, directing one's consciousness, making of every image a privileged place. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays A single sentence will suffice for modern man. He fornicated and read the papers. After that vigorous definition, the subject will be, if I may say so, exhausted. Albert Camus, The Fall Any country where I am not bored is a country that teaches me nothing. Albert Camus

In fact, it comes to this: nobody is capable of really thinking about anyone, even in the worst calamity. For really to think about someone means thinking about that person every minute of the day, without letting ones thoughts be diverted by anything- by meals, by a fly that settles on ones cheek, by household duties, or by a sudden itch somewhere. But there are always flies and itches. Thats why life is difficult to live. Albert Camus, The Plague

A craving for freedom and independence is generated only in a man still living on hope. Albert Camus At one time or another all normal people have wished their loved ones were dead. Albert Camus Who taught you all this, doctor?" The reply came promptly: "Suffering. Albert Camus what doesn't kill you make you stronger and stronger Albert Camus The love of God is a hard love. It demands total self-surrender, disdain of our human personality. And yet it alone can reconcile us to suffering and the deaths of children, it alone can justify them, since we cannot understand them, and we can only make God's will ours. Albert Camus Our civilization survives in the complacency of cowardly or malignant minds -- a sacrifice to the vanity of aging adolescents Albert Camus I dont know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I cannot know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. Albert Camus

I was about to tell him he was wrong to dwell on it, because it really didn't matter. But he cut me off and urged me one last time, drawing himself up to his full height and asking me if I believed in God. I said no. He sat down indignantly. He said it was impossible; all men believed in God, even those who turn their backs on him. That was his belief, and if he were ever to doubt it, his life would become meaningless. "Do you want my life to be meaningless?" he shouted. As far as I could see, it didn't have anything to do with me, and I told him so. But from across the table he had already thrust the crucifix in my face and was screaming irrationally, "I am a Christian. I ask Him to forgive you for sins. How can you not believe that He suffered for you?" I was struck by how sincere he seemed, but I had had enough. It was getting hotter and hotter. As always, whenever I want to get rid of someone I'm not really listening to, I made it appear as if I agreed. To my surprise, he acted triumphant. "You see, you see!" he said. "You do believe, don't you, and you're going to place your trust in Him, aren't you?" Obviously, I again said no. He fell back in his chair. Albert Camus

[] Everyone tries to make his life a work of art. We want love to last and we know that it does not last; even if, by some miracle, it were to last a whole lifetime, it would still be incomplete. Perhaps, in this insatiable need for perpetuation, we should better understand human suffering, if we knew that it was eternal. It appears that great minds are, sometimes, less horrified by suffering than by the fact that it does not endure. 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. One morning, after many dark nights of despair, an irrepressible longing to live will announce to us the fact that all is finished and that suffering has no more meaning than happiness. Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt If one could only say just once: 'this is clear', all would be saved Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays 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. Albert Camus To think the way you do, you have to be a man who lives either on a tremendous despair, or on a tremendous hope. On both perhaps. Albert Camus, A Happy Death

There comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. The schoolteacher is well aware of this. And the question is not one of knowing what punishment or reward attends the making of this calculation. The question is that of knowing whether two and two do make four. Albert Camus Men like us are good and proud and strong...if we had a faith, a God, nothing could undermine us. But we had nothing, we had to learn everything, and living for honor alone has its weaknesses... Albert Camus, The First Man But again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. The schoolteacher is well aware of this. And the question is not one of knowing what punishment or reward attends the making of this calculation. The question is one of knowing whether two and two do make four Albert Camus, The Plague

And so I learned that familiar paths traced in the dusk of summer evenings may lead as well to prison as to innocent untroubled sleep. Albert Camus To be born to create, to love, to win at games is to be born to live in time of peace. But war teaches us to lose everything and become what we were not. it all becomes a question of style. Albert Camus, Notebooks, 1935 1942 There was a time when I didnt at any minute have the slightest idea how I could reach the next one. Yes, one can wage war in this world, ape love, torture ones fellow man, or merely say evil of ones neighbour while knitting. But, in certain cases, carrying on, merely continuing, is superhuman. Albert Camus Some other memories of the funeral have stuck in my mind. The old boys face, for instance, when he caught up with us for the last time, just outside the village. His eyes were streaming with tears, of exhaustion or distress, or both together. But because of the wrinkles they couldnt flow down. They spread out, crisscrossed, and formed a smooth gloss on the old, worn face. Albert Camus, The Stranger The world I live in is loathsome to me, but I feel one with the men who suffer in it Albert Camus The most loathsome materialism is not the kind people usually think of, but the sort that attempts to let dead ideas pass for living realities, diverting into sterile myths the stubborn and lucid attention we give to what we have within us that must forever die. Albert Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood - never. Albert Camus No code of ethics and no effort are justifiable a priori in the face of the cruel mathematics that command our condition. Albert Camus But I fired four shots more into the inert body, on which they left no visible trace. And each successive shot was another loud, fateful rap on the door of my undoing. Albert Camus

The priest gazed around my cell and answered in a voice that sounded very weary to me. 'Every stone here sweats with suffering, I know that. I have never looked at them without a feeling of anguish. But deep in my heart I know that the most wretched among you have seen a divine face emerge from their darkness. That is the face you are asked to see.' This perked me up a little. I said I had been looking at the stones in these walls for months. There wasn't anything or anyone in the world I knew better. Maybe at one time, way back, I had searched for a face in them. But the face I was looking for was as bright as the sun and the flame of desireand it belonged to Marie. Albert Camus, The Stranger If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one. Albert Camus

At that moment he knew what his mother was thinking, and that she loved him. But he knew, too, that to love someone means relatively little; or, rather, that love is never strong enough to find the words befitting it. Thus he and his mother would always love each other silently. Albert Camus Every achievement is a servitude. It compels us to a higher achievement. Albert Camus From time to time I meet people who live among riches I cannot even imagine. I still have to make an effort to realize that others can feel envious of such wealth. A long time ago, I once lived a whole week luxuriating in all the goods of this world: we slept without a roof, on a beach, I lived on fruit, and spent half my days alone in the water. I learned something then that has always made me react to the signs of comfort or of a well-appointed house with irony, impatience, and sometimes anger. Although I live without worrying about tomorrow now, and therefore count myself among the privileged, I don't know how to own things. What I do have, which always comes to me without my asking for it, I can't seem to keep. Less from extravagance, I think, than from another kind of parsimony: I cling like a miser to the freedom that disappears as soon as there is an excess of things. Albert Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays Big tears of frustration and exhaustion were streaming down his cheeks. But because of all the wrinkles, they weren't dripping off. They spread out and ran together again, leaving a watery film over his ruined face. Albert Camus, The Stranger

I don't know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch, what resists me--that is what I understand. And these two certainties--my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle--I also know that I cannot reconcile them. What other truth can I admit without lying, without bringing in a hope which I lack and which means nothing within the limits of my condition? Albert Camus

Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified at having, for years, heard nothing which sounded human. It is always the same words telling the same lies. Albert Camus We're going forward, but nothing changes. Albert Camus I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically gettin killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying). I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions. Albert Camus After another moments silence she mumbled that I was peculiar, that that was probably why she loved me but that one day I might disgust her for the very same reason. Albert Camus Politics and the fate of mankind are formed by men without ideals and without greatness... Albert Camus It is in the thick of calamity that one gets hardened to the truth - in other words, to silence. Albert Camus, The Plague The words that reverberate for us at the confines of this long adventure of rebellion are not formulas for optimism, for which we have no possible use in the extremities of our unhappiness, but words of courage and intelligence which, on the shores of the eternal seas, even have the qualities of virtue. Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt When I look at my life and its secret colours, I feel like bursting into tears. Albert Camus, A Happy Death I have a very old and very faithful attachment for dogs. I like them because they always forgive. Albert Camus, The Fall Give up the tyranny of female charm. Albert Camus, Notebooks, 1935 1942

But in order to speak about all and to all, one has to speak of what all know and of the reality common to us all. The seas, rains, necessity, desire, the struggle against death--these are things that unite us all. We resemble one another in what we see together, in what we suffer together. Dreams change from individual, but the reality of the world is common to us all. Striving towards realism is therefore legitimate, for it is basically related to the artistic adventure. Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion and Death: Essays For the first time in a long time I thought about Maman. I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a 'fianc,' why she had played at beginning again. Even there, in that home where lives were fading out, evening was a kind of wistful respite. So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again. Nobody, nobody had the right to cry over her. And I felt ready to live it all again too. As if the blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself so like a brother, really I felt I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate. Albert Camus, The Stranger In the Midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible Summer. Albert Camus To begin with, poor peoples memory is less nourished than that of a rich; it has fewer landmarks in space because they seldom leave the place where they live, and fewer reference points in time throughtout lives that are grey and featureless. ... Remembrance of things past is is just for the rich. For the poor it only marks the faint traces on the path to death. (p. 62) Albert Camus, The First Man Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful. Albert Camus At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise . . . that denseness and that strangeness of the world is absurd. Albert Camus For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers. Albert Camus

Sometimes at midnight, in the great silence of the sleep bound town, the doctor turned on his radio before going to bed for the few hours' sleep he allowed himself. And from the ends of the earth, across thousands of miles of land and sea, kindly, well-meaning speakers tried to voice their fellow-feeling, and indeed did so, but at the same time proved the utter incapacity of every man truly to share in the suffering that he cannot see. "Oran! Oran!" In vain the call rang over oceans, in vain Rieux listened hopefully; always the tide of eloquence began to flow, bringing home still more the unbridgeable gulf that lay between Grand and the speaker. "Oran, we're with you!" they called emotionally. But not, the doctor told himself, to love or to die together-- and that's the only way... Albert Camus, The Plague Of an apartment-building manager who had killed himself I was told he had lost his daughter five years before, that he had changed greatly since, and that the experience had "undermined" him. A more exact word cannot be imagined. Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined. Society has but little connection with such beginnings. The worm is in man's heart - that is where it must be sought. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays From the moment absurdity is recognized, it becomes a passion, the most harrowing of all. But whether or not one can live with one's passions, whether or not one can accept their law, which is to burn the heart they simultaneously exalt - that is the whole question. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays and for all his life it would be kindness and love that made him cry, never pain or persecution, which on the contrary only reinforced his spirit and his resolution Albert Camus, The First Man The actor's realm is that of the fleeting. Of all kinds of fame, it is known, his is the most ephemeral. At least, this is said in conversation. But all kinds of fame are ephemeral. From the point of view of Sirius, Goethe's works in ten thousand years will be dust and his name forgotten. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays This absurd, godless world is, then, peopled with men who think clearly and have ceased to hope. And I have not yet spoken of the most absurd character, who is the creator. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays Without giving up anything on the plane of justice, yeild nothing on the plane of freedom Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion and Death: Essays An endless defeat Albert Camus, The Plague But what does it mean, the plague? It's life, that's all. Albert Camus, The Plague Thoughts of suicide have got me through many a bad night. Albert Camus In order to be created, a work of art must first make use of the dark forces of the soul Albert Camus

It is true that freedom, when it is made up principally of privileges, insults labor and separates it from culture. But freedom is not made up principally of privileges; it is made up especially of duties. And the moment each of us tries to give freedom's duties precedence over its privileges, freedom joins together labor and culture and sets in motion the only force that can effectively serve justice. The rule of our action, the secret of our resistance can be easily stated: everything that humiliates labor also humiliates the intelligence, and vice versa. And the revolutionary struggle, the centuries-old straining toward liberation can be defined first of all as a double and constant rejection of humiliation. Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion and Death: Essays The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. Albert Camus How do you put everyone in the pool, so you have the right to dry yourself in the sun? Albert Camus Humans are creatures, who spent their lifes trying to convince themselves, that their existence is not absurd Albert Camus As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Albert Camus

...today he felt life, youth, people slipping away from him, without being able to hold on to any of them, left with the blind hope that this obscure force that for so many years had raised him above the daily routine, nourished him unstintingly, and been equal to the most difficult circumstances--that, as it had with endless generosity given him reason to live, it would also give him reason to grow old and die without rebellion. Albert Camus, The First Man When I see a new face, something sets off an alarm bell inside me. 'slow down! Danger!' Even when the attraction is strongest, I am on my guard. Albert Camus, The Fall Moreover, most people, assuming they had not altogether abandoned religious observances, or did not combine them naively with a thoroughly immoral way of living, had replace normal religious practice by more or less extravagant superstitions. Albert Camus 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 its 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. Albert Camus, A Happy Death

People don't love each other at our age they please each other, that's all. Later on when you're old and impotent, you can love somebody. At our age, you just think you do. That's all it is. Albert Camus Even men without a gospel have their Mount of Olives. And one must not fall asleep on theirs either. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays When one has no character, one HAS to apply a method. Here it did wonders incontrovertibly, and I am living on the site of one of the greatest crimes in human history. Albert Camus, The Fall For the Greeks, values existed a priori and marked out the exact limits of every action. Modern philosophy places its values at the completion of action. They are not, but they become, and we shall know them completely only at the end of history. When they disappear, limits vanish as well, and since ideas differ as to what these values will be, since there is no struggle which, unhindered by these same values, does not extend indefinitely, we are now witnessing the Messianic forces confronting one another, their clamors merging in the shock of empires. Excess is a fire, according to Heraclitus. The fire is gaining ground; Nietzsche has been overtaken. It is no longer with hammer blows but with cannon shots that Europe philosophizes. Albert Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays The best are led to make greater demands upon themselves. As for those who succumb, they did not deserve to survive. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays he had never loved anything except what was inevitable. The people fate had imposed on him, the world as it appeared to him, everything in his life he had not been able to avoid...For the rest, for everything he had to choose, he made himself love, which is not the same thing. No doubt he had known the feeling of wonderment, passion, and even moments of tenderness. But each moment had sent him on to other moments, each person to others, and he had loved nothing he had chosen, except what was little by little imposed on him by circumstance, had lasted as much by accident as by intention, and finally became necessary: Jessica. Albert Camus, The First Man 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, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays O light! This the cry of all the characters of ancient drama brought face to face with their fate. This last resort was ours, too, and I knew it now. In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer. Albert Camus

And, on a wide view, I could see that it makes little difference whether one dies at the age of thirty or threescore and tensince, in either case, other men and women will continue living, the world will go on as before. Also, whether I died now or forty years hence, this business of dying had to be got through, inevitably. Still, somehow this line of thought wasn't as consoling as it should have been; the idea of all those years of life in hand was a galling reminder! Albert Camus, The Stranger Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object. Albert Camus And it was in the midst of shouts rolling against the terrace wall in massive waves that waxed in volume and duration, while cataracts of colored fire fell thicker through the darkness, that Dr. Rieux resolved to compile this chronicle, so that he should not be one of those who hold their peace but should bear witness in favor of those plague-stricken people; so that some memorial of the injustice and outrage done them might endure; and to state quite simply what we learn in time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise. Albert Camus, The Plague Next day Tarrou set to work and enrolled a first team of workers, soon to be followed by many others. However, it is not the narrator's intention to ascribe to these sanitary groups more importance than their due. Doubtless today many of our fellow citizens are apt to yield to the temptation of exaggerating the services they rendered. But the narrator is inclined to think that by attributing overimportance to praiseworthy actions one may, by implication, be paying indirect but potent homage to the worse side of human nature. For this attitude implies that such actions shine out as rare exceptions, while callousness and apathy are the general rule. The narrator does not share that view. The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. Albert Camus, The Plague, The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, and Selected Essays ...in the strange dizziness of that moment, the statue every man eventually erects and that hardens in the fire of the years, into which he then creeps and there awaits its final crumbling - that statue was rapidly cracking, it was already collapsing. All that was left was this anguished heart, eager to live, rebelling against the deadly order of the world that had been with him for forty years, and still struggling against the wall that separated him from the secret of all life, wanting to go farther, to go beyond, and to discover, discover before dying, discover at least in order to be, just once to be, for a single second, but forever. Albert Camus I wished I could have made him stay, to explain that I wanted things between us to be good, not so that he'd defend me better but, if I can put it this way, good in a natural way. Mostly, I could tell, I made him feel uncomfortable. He didn't understand me, and he was sort of holding it against me. I felt the urge to reassure him that I was like everybody else, just like

everybody else. But really there wasn't much point, and I gave up the idea out of laziness. Albert Camus, The Stranger ...there was only one thing that interested her and that was getting into bed with men whenever she'd the chance. And I warned her straight. 'You'll be sorry one day, my girl, and wish you'd got me back'. Albert Camus, The Stranger Well, Mr. Antichrist, thats all for the present! Albert Camus ...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 I grant we should add a third category: that of the true healers. But it is a fact one doesn't come across many of them, and anyhow it must be a hard vocation. That's why I decided to take, in every predicament, the victim's side, so as to reduce the damage done. Among them I can at least try to discover how on attains to the third category; in other words, to peace. Albert Camus And I felt ready to live it all again too. As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself so like a brother, really I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate. Albert Camus, The Stranger Then, already, it had brought to his mind the silence brooding over beds in which he had let men die. There as here it was the same solemn pause, the lull that follows battle; it was the silence of defeat. But the silence now enveloping his dead friend, so dense, so much akin to the nocturnal silence of the streets and of the town set free at last, made Rieux cruelly aware that this defeat was final, the last disastrous battle that ends a war and makes peace itself an ill beyond all remedy. The doctor could not tell if Tarrou had found peace, now that all was over, but for himself he had a feeling that no peace was possible to him henceforth, any more than there can an armistice for a mother bereaved of a son or for a man who buries his friend. Albert Camus Sometimes, from beyond the skycrapers, the cry of a tugboat finds you in your insomnia, and you remember that this desert of iron and cement is an island. Albert Camus Great feelings take with them their own universe, splendid or abject. Albert Camus The only serious question in life is whether to kill yourself or not. Albert Camus

But what then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared? For there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life. Albert Camus It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life had to have a meaning to be lived. It now becomes clear on the contrary that it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning Albert Camus every night, when he didn't want to be alone, or to age or die, with that set expression he assumed which she occasionally recognized on other men's faces, the only common expression of those madmen hiding under an appearance of wisdom until the madness seizes them and hurls them desperately toward a woman's body to bury in it, without desire, everything terrifying that solitude and night reveals to them. Albert Camus, Exile and the Kingdom I hadn't grasped how days could be at once long and short. Long, no doubt, as periods to live through, but so distended that they ended up by overlapping on each other. In fact, I never thought of days as such; only the words 'yesterday' and 'tomorrow' still kept some meaning. Albert Camus They went on living in poverty, though they were no longer in need, but they were set in their ways, and they looked on life with a resigned suspicion; they loved it as animals do, but they knew from experience that it would regularly give birth to disaster without even showing any sign that it was carrying it. Albert Camus, The First Man As for those whose role it is to love us - I mean, relatives and in-laws (what a word)- It's a different tune. They find the right word, but it's usually the one that wounds. Albert Camus, The Fall But it's not easy, because friendship is absent-minded or at least powerless. It cannot achieve what it wants. Perhaps, after all, it doesn't want strongly enough. Perhaps we do not love life enough. Albert Camus, The Fall The first concern of any dictatorship is, consequently, to subjugate both labor and culture. Albert Camus ...he was conscious of the disastrous fact that love and desire must be expressed in the same way... Albert Camus, A Happy Death Once one's up against it, the precise manner of one's death has obviously small importance. Albert Camus

What did it matter if he existed for two or for twenty years? Happiness was the fact that he had existed. Albert Camus, A Happy Death I have always felt I lived on the high seas, threatened, at the heart of a royal happiness. Albert Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays [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 Turbulent childhood, adolescent daydreams in the drone of the bus's motor, mornings, unspoiled girls, beaches, young muscles always at the peak of their effort, evening's slight anxiety in a sixteen-year-old-heart, lust for life, fame, and ever the same sky through the years, unfailing in strength and light, itself insatiable, consuming one by one over a period of months the victims stretched out in the form of crosses on the beach at the deathlike hour of noon. Albert Camus What I believe to be true I must therefore preserve. What seems to me so obvious, even against me, I must support. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having ever asked any clear question Albert Camus, The Fall I longed to be forgotten in order to be able to complain to myself. Albert Camus, The Fall Maman used to say that you can always find something to be happy about. In my prison, when the sky turned red and a new day slipped into my cell, I found out that she was right. Albert Camus, The Stranger

What is there more real, for instance, in our universe than a man's life, and how can we hope to preserve it better than a realistic film? But under what conditions is such a film possible? Under purely imaginary conditions. We should have to presuppose, in fact, an ideal camera focused on the man day and night and constantly registering his every move. The very projection of such a film would last a lifetime and could be seen only by an audience of people willing to waste their lives in watching someone else's life in great detail. Even under such conditions, such an unimaginable film would not be realistic for the simple reason that the reality of a man's life is not limited to the spot in which he happens to be. It lies also in other lives that give shape to his--lives of people he loves, to begin with, which would have to be filmed too, and also lives of unknown people, influential and insignificant, fellow citizens, policemen, professors, invisible comrades from the mines and foundries, diplomats and dictators, religious reformers, artists who create myths that are decisive for out conduct-humble representatives, in short, of the sovereign chance that dominates the most routine existences. Consequently, there is but one possible realistic film: one that is constantly shown us by an invisible camera on the world's screen. The only realistic artist, then, is God, if he exists. All other artists are, ipso facto, unfaithful to reality. Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion and Death: Essays ...he said firmly, "God can help you. All the men Ive seen in your position turned to Him in their time of trouble." Obviously, I replied, they were at liberty to do so, if they felt like it. I, however, didnt want to be helped, and I hadnt time to work up interest for something that didnt interest me. Albert Camus, The Stranger Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves. Albert Camus, The Plague We are not certain, we are never certain. Albert Camus On my way out I was even going to shake his hand, but I remembered just in time that I'd killed a man. Albert Camus, The Stranger There are more things to admire in men then to despise. Albert Camus, The Plague 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. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays In any case, the one man paved the way for the deeds of the other, in a sense foreshadowed and even legitimized by them. Albert Camus, The Stranger It seems that the people of Oran are like that friend of Flaubert who, on the point of death, casting a last glance at the irreplaceable earth, exclaimed: "Close the window, it's too beautiful. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

I am too much in love with my lies and hypocrisies not to confess them fervently. Albert Camus It is a matter of persisting. At a certain point on his path the absurd man is tempted. History is not lacking in either religions or prophets, even without gods. He is asked to leap. All he can reply is that he doesn't fully understand, that it is not obvious. Indeed, he does not want to do anything but what he fully understands. He is assured that this is the sin of pride, but he does not understand the notion of sin; that perhaps hell is in store, but he has not enough imagination to visualize that strange future; that he is losing immortal life, but that seems to him an idle consideration. An attempt is made to get him to admit his guilt. He feels innocent. To tell the truth, that is all he feels his irreparable innocence. This is what allows him everything. Hence, what he demands of himself is to live solely with what he knows, to accommodate himself with what is, and to bring in nothing that is not certain. He is told that nothing is. But this at least is certainty. And it is with this that he is concerned: he wants to find out if it is possible to live without appeal. Albert Camus So the thing that bothered me most was that the condemned man had to hope the machine would work the first time. Albert Camus, The Stranger The future is the only transcendental value for men without God. Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt In any case, if the reader would have a correct idea of the mood of these exiles, we must conjure up once more those dreary evenings, sifting down through a haze of dust and golden light upon the treeless streets filled with teeming crowds of men and women. For, characteristically, the sound that rose towards the terraces still bathed in the last glow of daylight, now that the noises of vehicles and motors--the sole voice of cities in ordinary times--had ceased, was but one vast rumour of low voices and incessant footfalls, the drumming of innumerable soles timed to the eerie whistling of the plague in the sultry air above, the sound of a huge concourse of people marking time, a never-ending, stifling drone that, gradually swelling, filled the town from end to end, and evening after evening gave its truest, mournfullest expression to the blind endurance which had ousted love from all our hearts. Albert Camus

He stated that I had no place in a society whose most fundamental rules I ignored and that I could not appeal to the same human heart whose elementary response I knew nothing of. Albert Camus And the wave of tenderness and pity that at once filled his heart was not the stirring of the soul that leads the son to the memory of the vanished father, but the overwhelming compassion that a grown man feels for an unjustly murdered child something here was not in the natural order and, in truth, there was no order but only madness and chaos when the son was older than the father. The course of time itself was shattering around him while he remained motionless among those tombs he now no longer saw, and the years no longer kept

to their places in the great river that flows to its end. They were no more than waves and surf and eddies where Jacques Cormery was not struggling in the grip of anguish and pity. He looked at the other inscriptions in that section and realized from the dates that this soil was strewn with children who had been the fathers of graying men who thought they were living in this present time. For he too believed he was living, he alone had created himself, he knew his own strength, his vigor, he could cope and he had himself well in hand. But, in the strange dizziness of that moment, the statue every man eventually erects and that hardens in the fire of the years, into which he then creeps and there awaits its final crumbling that statue was rapidly cracking, it was already collapsing. All that was left was this anguished heart, eager to live, rebelling against the deadly order of the world that had been with him for forty years, and still struggling against the wall that separated him from the secret of all life, wanting to go farther, to go beyond, and to discover, discover before dying, discover at last in order to be, just once to be, for a single second, but forever. Albert Camus, The First Man Squeezed against each other in the heavy heat, they were silent...looking toward the home that was expecting them--quiet, perspiring, resigned to this existence divided among a soulless job, long trips coming and going in an uncomfortable trolley, and at the end an abrupt sleep. On some evenings it would sadden Jacques to look at them. Until then he had only known the riches and the joys of poverty. But now heat and boredom and fatigue were showing him their curse, the curse of work so stupid you could weep and so interminably monotonous that it made the days too long and, at the same time, life too short. Albert Camus, The First Man Without Culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle.This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future. Albert Camus It's not your pictures I like; it's your painting. Albert Camus, Exile and the Kingdom He had loved is mother and his child, everything that it was not up to him to choose. And after all he, who had challenged everything, questioned everything, he had never loved anything except what was inevitable. The people fate had imposed on him, the world as it appeared to him, everything in his life he had not been able to avoid, his illness, his vocation, fame or poverty--in a word, his star. For the rest, for everything he had to choose, he made himself love, which is not the same thing. No doubt he had known the feeling of wonderment, passion, and even moments of tenderness. But each moment had sent him on to other moments, each person to others, and he had loved nothing he had chosen, except what was little by little imposed on him by circumstance, had lasted as much by accident as by intention, and finally became necessary: Jessica. The heart, the heart above all is not free. It is inevitability and the recognition of the inevitable. And he, in truth, had never wholeheartedly loved other than the inevitable. All that was left for him was to love his own death. Albert Camus My dear friend, we mustn't give them even the slightest excuse to judge us! Otherwise, we end up in pieces. Albert Camus, The Fall

True, at first sight, Grand manifested both the outward signs and typical manner of a humble employee in the local administration. Tall and thin he seemed lost in the garments that the always chose a size too large, under the illusion that they would wear longer. Though he still had most of the teeth in his lower jaw, all the upper ones were gone, with the result that when he smiled, raising his upper lip - the lower scarcely moved - his mouth looked like a small black hole let into his face. Also he had the walk of a shy young priest, sidling along walls and slipping mouselike into doorways, and he exuded a faint odor of smoke and basement rooms; in short, he had all the attributes of insignificance. Indeed, it cost an effort to picture him otherwise than bent over a desk, studiously revising the tariff of the town baths or gathering for a junior secretary the materials of a report on the new garbage-collection tax. Even before you knew what his employment was, you had a feeling that he'd been brought into the world for the sole purpose of performing the discreet but needful duties of a temporary assistant municipal clerk on a salary of sixty-two francs, thirty centimes a day. Albert Camus Healthy people have a natural skill of avoiding feverish eyes. Albert Camus, A Happy Death There's the risk of being loved...and that would keep me from being happy. Albert Camus, A Happy Death With the exception of professional rationalists, today people despair of true knowledge. If only the significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be he history of its successive regrets and its impotences. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isnt the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness. Albert Camus

I know positively - yes Rieux I can say I know the world inside out as no one on earth is free from it. And I know too that we must keep endless watch on ourselves lest in careless moment we breathe in somebody's face and fasten the infection on him. What's natural is the microbe. All the rest- health integrity purity if you like - is a product of the human will of vigilance that must never falter. The good man the man who infects hardly anyone is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention. And it needs tremendous will-power a never ending tension of the mind to avoid such lapses. Yes Rieux it's a wearying business being plague-stricken. But it's still more wearying to refuse to be it. That's why everybody in the world today looks so tired everyone is more or less sick of plague. But that is also why some of us who want to get the plague out of their systems feel such desperate weariness a weariness from which nothing remains to set us free except death. Albert Camus, The Plague

I thought the traveler pretty much deserved what he got and that you should never play games. Albert Camus As if this great outburst of anger had purged all my ills, killed all my hopes, I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world- and finding it so much like myself, in fact so fraternal, I realized that Id been happy, and that I was still happy. For the final consummation and for me to feel less lonely, my last wish was that there should be a crowd of spectators at my execution and that they should greet me with cries of hatred. Albert Camus, The Stranger She was wearing a pair of my pajamas with the sleeves rolled up. When she laughed I wanted her again. A minute later she asked me if I loved her. I told her it didnt mean anything but that I didnt think so. She looked sad. Albert Camus, The Stranger False judges are held up in the worlds admiration and I alone know the true ones. Albert Camus, The Fall I have to admit it humbly, mon cher compatriote, I was always bursting with vanity. I, I, I is the refrain of my whole life, which could be heard in everything I said. I could never talk without boasting, especially if I did so with that shattering discretion that was my specialty. It is quite true that I always lived free and powerful. I simply felt released in the regard to all the for the excellent reason that I recognized no equals. I always considered myself more intelligent than everyone else, as Ive told you, but also more sensitive and more skillful, a crack shot, an incomparable driver, a better lover. Even in the fields in which it was easy for me to verify my inferioritylike tennis, for instance, in which I was but a passable partnerit was hard for me not to think that, with a little time and practice, I would surpass the best players. I admitted only superiorities in me and this explained my good will and serenity. When I was concerned with others, I was so out of pure condescension, in utter freedom, and all the credit went to me: my self-esteem would go up a degree. Albert Camus, The Fall When an innocent youth can have his eyes destroyed, a Christian should either lose his faith or consent to having his eyes destroyed. Albert Camus Thus, in a middle course between these heights and depths, they drifted through life rather than lived, the prey of aimless days and sterile memories, like wandering shadows that could have acquired substance only by consenting to root themselves in the solid earth of their distress. Thus, too, they came to know the incorrigible sorrow of all prisoners and exiles, which is to live in company with a memory that serves no purpose. Albert Camus

...once I admitted the arguments of necessity and force majeure put forward by the less eminent, I couldnt reject those of the eminent. To which they retorted that the surest way of playing the game of the red robes was to leave to them the monopoly of the death penalty. My reply to this was that if you gave in once, there was no reason for not continuing to give in. It seems to me that history has borne me out; today theres a sort of competition who will kill the most. Theyre all mad over murder and they couldnt stop killing men even if they wanted to. Albert Camus, The Plague Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow; don't walk behind me, I may not lead; walk beside me, and just be my friend. Albert Camus On some evenings it would sadden Jacques to look at them (workers). Until then he had only known the riches and the joys of poveryy. But now heat and boredom and fatigue were showing him their curse, the curse of work so stupid you could weep and so interminably monotonous that it made the days too long and, at the same time, life too short. Albert Camus, The First Man You alone will know why I killed myself. You know my principles. I hate those who commit suicide. Besause of what they do TO OTHERS. If you have to do it, you must disguise it. Out of kindness. Albert Camus, The First Man A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously. Albert Camus - As quoted in Albert Camus : The Invincible Summer (1958) by Albert Maquet, p. 86; a remark made about the Marquis de Sade. Albert Camus The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody. Albert Camus 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. Albert Camus, The Stranger What more ghastly image can be called up than that of a man betrayed by his body who, simply because he did not die in time, lives out the comedy while awaiting the end, face to face with that God he does not adore, serving him as he served life, kneeling before a void and arms outstretched toward a heaven without eloquence that he knows to be also without depth? Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

The actors of the era knew they were excommunicated. Entering the profession amounted to choosing Hell. And the Church discerned in them her worst enemies. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

One of the villagers had left his home to try his luck abroad. After twenty five years, having made a fortune, he returned to his country with his wife and child. Meanwhile his mother and sister had been running a small hotel in the village where he was born. He decided to give them a surprise and, leaving his wife and child in another inn, he went to stay at his mothers place, booking a room under an assumed name. His mother and sister completely failed to recognize him. At dinner that evening he showed them a large sum of money he had on him, and in the course of the night they slaughtered him with a hammer. After taking the money they flung the body into the river. Next morning his wife came and, without thinking, betrayed the guests identity. His mother hanged herself. His sister threw herself into a well. Albert Camus man has an idea of a better world than this. But better does not mean different, it means unified Religion or crime, every human endeavor in fact, finally obeys this unreasonable desire and claims to give life a form it does not have. Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt The only picture of Tarrou he would always have would be the picture of a man who firmly gripped the steering-wheel of his car when driving, or else the picture of that stalwart body, now lying motionless. Knowing meant that: a living warmth, and a picture of death. Albert Camus ...the play of the toughest and most lucid mind are at the same time both lavished and squandered. Albert Camus Likewise and during every day of an unillustrious life, time carries us. But a moment always comes when we have to carry it. We live on the future: tomorrow, later on, when you have made your way, you will understand when you are old enough. Such irrelevancies are wonderful, for, after all, its a matter of dying. Yet a day comes when a man notices or says that he is thirty. Thus he asserts his youth. But simultaneously he situates himself in relation to time. He takes his place in it. He admits that he stands at a certain point on a curve that he acknowledges having to travel to its end. He belongs to time, and by the horror that seizes him, he recognizes his worst enemy. Tomorrow, he was longing for tomorrow, whereas everything in him ought to reject it. That revolt of the flesh is the absurd. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays There is only one class of men, the privileged class Albert Camus In vain a yealous evangelist with a fely hat and flowing tie threads his way through the crowd, crying without cease: 'God is great and good. Come unto Him.' On the contrary, they all make haste toward some trivial objective that seems of more immediate interest than God. Albert Camus, The Plague

A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to discover, through the detours of his art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened. Albert Camus Maman used to say that you can always find something to be happy about. Albert Camus, The Stranger It was a rustling sound that woke me up. Because I'd had my eyes closed, the whiteness of the room seemed even brighter than before. There wasn't a shadow anywhere in front of me, and every object, every angle and curve stood out so sharply it made my eyes hurt. That's when Maman's friends came in. There were about ten in all, and they floated into the blinding light without a sound. They sat down without a single chair creaking. I saw them more clearly than I had ever seen anyone, and not one detail of their faces or their clothes escaped me. But I couldn't hear them, and it was hard for me to believe that they really existed. Almost all the women were wearing aprons, and the strings, which were tied tight around their waists, made their bulging stomachs stick out even more. I'd never noticed what huge stomachs old women can have. Almost all the men were skinny and carried canes. What struck me most about their faces was that I couldn't see their eyes, just a faint glimmer in a nest of wrinkles. When they'd sat down, most of them looked at me and nodded awkwardly, their lips sucked in by their toothless mouths, so that I couldn't tell if they were greeting me or if it was just a nervous tic. I think they were greeting me. It was then that I realized they were all sitting across from me, nodding their heads, grouped around the caretaker. For a second I had the ridiculous feeling that they were there to judge me. Albert Camus In the forest, while the others settled the baskets and dishtowels under the trees, Jacques helped Michel rub down the horses and fasten around their necks the gray-brown canvas nose bags, in which the horses chomped their jaws, opening and closing their large brotherly eyes or chasing away a fly with an impatient hoof. Albert Camus, The First Man By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more. Albert Camus

By a special urgency measures the denizens of grants in perpetuity were evicted from their graves and the exhumed remains dispatched to the crematorium. And soon the plague victims likewise had to go to a fiery end. This meant that the old crematorium east of the town, outside the gates, had to be utilized. Accordingly the east-gate sentry post was moved farther out. Then a municipal employee had an idea that greatly helped the harassed authorities; he advised them to employ the streetcar line running along the coastal road, which was now unused. So the interiors of streetcars and trailers were adapted to this new purpose, and a branch line was laid down to the crematorium, which thus became a terminus. During all the late summer and throughout the autumn there could daily be seen moving along the road skirting the cliffs above the sea a strange procession of passengerless streetcars swaying against the skyline. The residents in this area soon learned what was going on. And though the cliffs were patrolled day and night,m little groups of people contrived to thread their way unseen between the rocks and would toss flowers into the open trailers as the cars went by. And in the warm darkness of the summer nights the cars could be heard clanking on their way, laden with flowers and corpses. Albert Camus, The Plague, The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, and Selected Essays The revolutionary government was required to become the government of the war. Albert Camus