Albert Camus Quotes

The soul of a murderer is blind

The struggle to the top alone will make a human heart SWELL.

I shall not, as far as I am concerned, try to pass myself off as a Christian in your presence. I share with you the same revulsion from evil. But I do not share your hope, and I continue to struggle against this universe in which children suffer and die.

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.

Men and women consume one another rapidly in what is called "the act of love," or else settle down to a mild habit of conjugality. We seldom find a mean between these two extremes.

What really counted was the possibility of escape, a leap to 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.

Creating is living doubly. The groping, anxious quest of a Proust, his meticulous collecting of flowers, of wallpapers, and of anxieties, signifies nothing else.

We have to live and let live in order to create what we are.

It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.

The world in which we were called to exist was an absurd world, and there was no other in which we could take refuge.

When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune.

In order to be created, a work of art must first make use of the dark forces of the soul

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.

There is not a single true work of art that has not in the end added to the inner freedom insight and life of each person who has known and loved it.

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.

Intelligence in chains loses in lucidity what it gains in intensity.

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.

No longer were there individual destinies; only a collective destiny, made of plague and emotions shared by all.

Once in the midst of a seemingly endless winter, I discovered within myself an invincible spring.

God is not necessary to create culpability, or to punish. Our fellow men are enough for that, helped by ourselves.

Have pity, Lord, on those who love and are separated.

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.

There is merely bad luck in not being loved; there is misfortune in not loving. All of us, today, are dying of this misfortune. For violence and hatred dry up the heart itself; the long fight for justice exhausts the love that nevertheless gave birth to it.

To begin with, poor people´s 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.

...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'.

Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?

In art, rebellion is consummated and perpetuated in the act of real creation, not in criticism or commentary.

Nihilism is not only despair and negation, but above all the desire to despair and to negate.

We are all special cases.

A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.

To two men living the same number of years, the world always provides the same sum of experiences. It is up to us to be conscious of them.

So the thing that bothered me most was that the condemned man had to hope the machine would work the first time.

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.

There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.

Absolute freedom mocks at justice. Absolute justice denies freedom.

Some are created to love, while the others - to live.

Somebody has to have the last word. If not, every argument could be opposed by another and we'd never be done with it.

Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter.

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.

Proof is never definitive, after all; one has to begin again with each new person.

In our well-policed society we recognize that an illness is serious from the fact that we don't dare speak of it directly.

All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning.

There is no shame in preferring happiness.

Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.

Even when one sits in the prisoner's dock, it is interesting to hear talk about oneself.

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.

And indeed it could be said that once the faintest stirring of hope became possible, the dominion of plague was ended.

But - I cannot make a choice. I have my own sorrow, but I suffer with him, too; I share his pain. I understand all - that is my trouble.