Albert Camus Quotes

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!

Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose a future.

Art does not tolerate reason.

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

I have no friends, I only have accomplices now. On the other hand, my accomplices are more numerous than my friends: they are the human race.

Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature.

The Poor Man whom everyone speaks of, the Poor Man whom everyone pities, one of the repulsive Poor from whom charitable souls keep their distance, he has still said nothing. Or, rather, he has spoken through the voice of Victor Hugo, Zola, Richepin. At least, they said so. And these shameful impostures fed their authors. Cruel irony, the Poor Man tormented with hunger feeds those who plead his case.

...the play of the toughest and most lucid mind are at the same time both lavished andsquandered.

That's the way man is, cher monsieur. He has two faces: he can't love without self-love.

Imagination offers people consolation for what they cannot be, and humor for what they actually are.

The revolutionary government was required to become the government of the war.

There is no frontier between being and appearing.

I felt the urge to reassure him that I was like everybody else, just like everybody else.

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?

In order to exist just once in the world, it is necessary never again to exist.

There will be no lasting peace either in the heart of individuals or in social customs until death is outlawed.

The mistake that men make is that they do not believe in theater. Otherwise, they would know that every man is allowed to play thecelestial tragedies and to become god. All he has to do is harden his heart.

By giving too much importance to fine actions one may end by paying an indirect but powerful tribute to evil, because in so doing one implies that such fine actions are only valuable because they are rare, and that malice or indifference are far more common motives in the actions of men.

At one time or another all normal people have wished their loved ones were dead.

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?

...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.

There may be responsible persons, but there are no guilty ones.

It is immoral not to tell.

A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.

We rarely confide in those who are better than we are.

Freedom is not a gift received from the State or leader, but a possession to be won every day by the effort of each and the union of all.

Freedom is not a reward or a decoration that you toast in champagne. On the contrary, it's hard graft and a long-distance run, all alone, very exhausting. Alone in a dreary room, alone in the dock before the judges, and alone to make up your mind, before yourself and before the judgement of others. At the end of every freedom there is a sentence, which is why freedom is too heavy to bear.

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.

Humans are creatures, who spent their lifes trying to convince themselves, that their existence is not absurd

What on earth prompted you to take a hand in this?" "I don't know. My… my code of morals, perhaps." "Your code of morals. What code, if I may ask?" "Comprehension.

What is a firm hand to me, of what use to me is this astonishing power if I cannot change the order of things, if I cannot make the sun set in the east, that suffering diminish and that beings no longer die?

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

Likewise, every time somebody interjects to speak of my honesty there is someone who quivers inside me.

There is a terrible emptiness in me, an indifference that hurts.

To be famous, in fact, one has only to kill one's landlady.

Every man, and for stronger reasons, every artist, wants to be recognized. So do I.

At a certain level of suffering or injustice no one can do anything for anyone. Pain is solitary.

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. We all do it, every day, to make life simpler.

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.

One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

There is no more futile punishment than futile and hopeless labor.

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.

They hurt each other without wanting to, just because each represented to the others the cruel and demanding necessity of their lives.

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.

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.

If I convince myself that this life has no other aspect than that of the absurd, if I feel that its whole equilibrium depends on that perpetual opposition between my conscious revolt and the darkness in which it struggles, if I admit that my freedom has no meaning except in relation to its limited fate, then I must say that what counts is not the best living but the most living.

God put self-pity by the side of despair like the cure by the side of the disease.

I make myself strict rules in order to correct my nature. But it is my nature that I finally obey.