Authors — Quotes

Albert Camus Quotes: 72

Don’t walk in front of me… I may not followDon’t walk behind me… I may not leadWalk beside me… just be my friend
Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.
I know of only one duty, and that is to love.
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.
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
It is necessary to fall in love... if only to provide an alibi for all the random despair you are going to feel anyway.
Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.
Why should it be essential to love rarely in order to love much?
A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.
Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?
Live to the point of tears.
You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.
The Fall
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.
Friendship often ends in love, but love in friendship - never.
But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.
He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.
When I look at my life and its secret colours, I feel like bursting into tears.
A Happy Death
Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present.
Notebooks 1935-1942
Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.
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.
The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.
I used to advertise my loyalty and I don't believe there is a single person I loved that I didn't eventually betray.
The Fall
Do not wait for the last judgment. It comes every day.
I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist.
Notebooks 1951-1959
Man wants to live, but it is useless to hope that this desire will dictate all his actions.
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.
The Plague
Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.
The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.
The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep
It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.
Neither Victims Nor Executioners
If something is going to happen to me, I want to be there.
The Stranger
How can sincerity be a condition of friendship? A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.
Au milieu de l'hiver, j'ai découvert en moi un invincible été.
What is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying.
The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
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.
Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.
Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it.
Nothing in life is worth,turning your back on,if you love it.
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.
I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L'Illustration. Something desperate, you know.
A Happy Death
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.
L'Étranger
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.
Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable.
A man devoid of hope and conscious of being so has ceased to belong to the future.
The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
What made me run away was doubtless not so much the fear of settling down, but of settling down permanently in something ugly.
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.
The Fall
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)
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!
The Fall
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.
The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.
For who would dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for a single moment's human suffering
The Plague
You are forgiven for your happiness and your successes only if you generously consent to share them.
Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.
There is but one true philosophical problem and that is suicide.
Mother used to say that however miserable one is, there’s always something to be thankful for. And each morning, when the sky brightened and light began to flood my cell, I agreed with her.
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.
The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
To stay or to go, it amounted to the same thing.
The Stranger
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.
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.
The Plague
And indeed it could be said that once the faintest stirring of hope became possible, the dominion of plague was ended.
The Plague
There is no fate which cannot be surmounted by scorn.
No code of ethics and no effort are justifiable a priori in the face of the cruel mathematics that command our condition.
There's the risk of being loved...and that would keep me from being happy.
A Happy Death
Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him?
Every achievement is a servitude. It compels us to a higher achievement.
A novel is never anything but a philosophy expressed in images. And in a good novel the philosophy has disappeared into the images.
Lyrical and Critical Essays
I don’t 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.
որևէ քաղաք ճանաչելու ամենաճիշտ ձևերից մեկն էլ իմանալն է, թե ինչպե՞ս են այնտեղ աշխատում, ինչպե՞ս են սիրում, և ինչպե՞ս են մեռնում:
...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?