...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.

I understood, by dint of digging into my memories, that modesty helped me to shine, humility helped me to triumph and virtue to oppress.

If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.

For the absurd man, it is not a matter of explaining and solving, but of experiencing and describing. Everything begins with lucid indifference.

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.

What will be left of the power of example if it is proved that capital punishment has another power, and a very real one, which degrades men to the point of shame, madness, and murder?

Liberty is dangerous, as hard to get along with as it is exciting.