Albert Camus Quotes

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.

There was a time when I didn’t 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 one’s fellow man, or merely say evil of one’s neighbour while knitting. But, in certain cases, carrying on, merely continuing, is superhuman.

The principles which men give to themselves end by overwhelming their noblest intentions.

I know simply that the sky will last longer than I.

Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood - never.

I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.

Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

... one cannot be happy in exile or in oblivion. One cannot always be a stranger. I want to return to my homeland, make all my loved ones happy. I see no further than this.

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.

The spirit of rebellion can only exist in a society where a theoretical equality conceals great factual inequalities. The problem of rebellion, therefore, has no meaning except within our own Western society.

To abandon oneself to principles is really to die - and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love.

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.

Whoever gives nothing, has nothing. The greatest misfortune is not to be unloved, but not to love.

Crime too is a form of solitude, even if one thousand get together to commit it. And it is right for me to die alone, after having lived and killed alone.

You always get exaggerated notions of things you don't know anything about.

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 rebel can never find peace. He knows what is good and, despite himself, does evil. The value which supports him is never given to him once and for all - he must fight to uphold it, unceasingly.

The opposite of an idealist is too often a man without love.

If you keep on excusing, you eventually give your blessing to the slave camp, to cowardly force, to organized executioners, to the cynicism of great political monsters; you finally hand over your brothers.

Man is an idea, and a precious small idea once he turns his back on love.

One recognizes one's course by discovering the paths that stray from it.

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

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 'fiancé,' 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.

These are facts the heart can feel; yet they call for careful study before they become clear to the intellect.

To live is in itself a value judgment. To breathe is to judge.

We come into the world laden with the weight of an infinite necessity.

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.

By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.

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.

Life is a sum of all your choices". So, what are you doing today?

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion; in order to serve others better, one has to hold them at a distance for a time. But where can one find the solitude necessary to vigor, the deep breath in which the mind collects itself and courage gauges its strength? There remain big cities.

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.

Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.

But,' I reminded myself, 'it's common knowledge that life isn't worth living, anyhow.

If one could only say just once: 'this is clear', all would be saved

The absurd is essentially a divorce. It lies in neither of the elements compared; it is born of their confrontation.

The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment, it is all that links them together.

Generally, I like all islands. There, it is easier to rule.

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.

This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.

There is a metaphysical honour in ending the world's absurdity. Conquest or play-acting, multiple loves, absurd revolt are tributes that man pays to his dignity in a campaign in which he is defeated in advance.... War cannot be negated. One must live it or die of it. So it is with the absurd: it is a question of breathing with it, of recognizing its lessons and recovering their flesh. In this regard the absurd joy par excellence is creation. "Art and nothing but art", said Nietzsche, "we have art in order not to die of the truth."

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.

Life should be lived to the point of tears

Everything considered, a determined soul will always manage.

I have never been able, really, to regret anything in all my life. I have always been far much too absorbed in the present moment or the immediate future to think back.

The most exhausting effort in my life has been to suppress my own nature in order to make it serve my biggest plans.

There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness.

That must be wonderful; I have no idea of what it means.