Albert Camus Quotes

That is love, to give away everything, to sacrifice everything, without the slightest desire to get anything in return.3

There always comes a time when one must choose between contemplation and action. This is called becoming a man.

Whereas the Greeks gave to will the boundaries of reason, we have come to put the will's impulse in the very center of reason, which has, as a result, become deadly.

The urge to revolt is one of the essential dimensions of human nature.

The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding.

Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders.

I was always able to understand my friend who decided to quit smoking and who, through an effort of will, succeeded in doing so. One morning, he opened the newspaper, read that the first H- bomb had exploded, found out about the bomb's admirable effects and went straight to the tobacconist's.

Am well. Thinking of you always. Love

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.

One plays at being immortal and after a few weeks one doesn't even know whether or not one can hang on till the next day.

Men like us are good and proud and strong...if we had a faith, a God, nothing could undermine us. But we had nothing, we had to learn everything, and living for honor alone has its weaknesses.

We are all exceptional cases. We all want to appeal against something! Each of us insists on being innocent at all cost, even if he has to accuse the whole human race and heaven itself.

Happiness too is inevitable.

I do not want to found anything on the incomprehensible. I want to know whether I can live with what I know and with that alone.

Mon cher ami, let's not give them any pretext, no matter how small, for judging us!!! Otherwise, we'll be left in shreds. We are forced to take the same precautions as the animal trainer. If, before going into the cage, he has the misfortune to cut himself while shaving, what a feast for the wild animals!!

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

We call first truths those we discover after all the others.

And real nobility (that of the heart) is based on scorn, courage, and profound indifference.

The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

The words that reverberate for us at the confines of this long adventure of rebellion are not formulas for optimism, for which we have no possible use in the extremities of our unhappiness, but words of courage and intelligence which, on the shores of the eternal seas, even have the qualities of virtue.

I always found misogyny vulgar and stupid, and I found almost all the women I have known to be my betters. However, placing them so high, I used them more often than I served them. How does one make sense of this?

Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.

But above all, in order to be, never try to seem.

Have you noticed that only death arouses our emotions? How we love thee friends who have just passed away, right? How we admire those master who no longer speak, their mouths full of dirt. We them we are not obligated.

We must stitch up what has been torn apart, render justice imaginable in the world which is so obviously unjust, make happiness meaningful for nations poisoned by the misery of this century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But tasks are called superhuman when men take a long time to complete them, that is all.

One might think, that a period which, within fifty years, uproots, enslaves or kills seventy million human beings, should only, and forthwith, be condemned. But also its guilt must be understood.

I enjoyed my own nature to the fullest, and we all know there lies happiness, although, to soothe one another mutually, we occasionally pretend to condemn such joys as selfishness.

If we understood the enigmas of life there would be no need for art.

Germany collapsed as a result of having engaged in a struggle for empire with the concepts of provincial politics.

“To think the way you do,” he said smiling, “you have to be a man who lives either on a tremendous despair, or on a tremendous hope.” “On both, perhaps.”

I have a very old and very faithful attachment for dogs. I like them because they always forgive.

There is nothing abstract about pain. It is specific, it is real, and, when it is intense, it is world destroying.

If there is a soul, it is a mistake to believe that it is given to us fully created. It is created here, throughout a whole life. And living is nothing else but that long and painful bringing forth.

Wandering seemed no more than the happiness of an anxious man.

If Christianity is pessimistic as to man, it is optimistic as to human destiny. Well, I can say that, pessimistic as to human destiny, I am optimistic as to man.

Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.

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

[Love] is the type of disease that spares neither the intelligent nor the idiotic.

What is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying.

We all have a weakness for beauty.

Poverty, first of all was never a misfortune for me; it was radiant with sunlight.. I owe it to my family, first of all, who lacked everything and who envied practically nothing.

For me, physical love has always been bound to an irresistible feeling of innocence and joy. Thus, I cannot love in tears but in exaltation.

I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints.

The reasoning is classic in its clarity. If God does not exist, Kirilov is god. If God does not exist, Kirilov must kill himself. Kirilov must therefore kill himself to become god. That logic is absurd, but it is what is needed.

At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman.

All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.

My life was lucky so that I met, I loved (and disappointed) only outstanding people.

More and more, when faced with the world of men, the only reaction is one of individualism. Man alone is an end unto himself. Everything one tries to do for the common good ends in failure.