Albert Camus
Politics and the fate of mankind are formed by men without ideals and without greatness. Those who have greatness within them do not go in for politics.Collection: Fate
After all, I do not have so many ways of proving that I am free. We is always free at the expense of someone else. It is a bother,but it is normal.Collection: Freedom
Big tears of frustration and exhaustion were streaming down his cheeks. But because of all the wrinkles, they weren't dripping off. They spread out and ran together again, leaving a watery film over his ruined face.Collection: Frustration
We are not certain, we are never certain.Collection: Certain
[Paris] is dirty. It has pigeons and black yards. The people have white skin.Collection: Dirty
At one time or another all normal people have wished their loved ones were dead.Collection: People
The soul of a murderer is blindCollection: Soul
...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'.Collection: Girl
In that daily effort in which intelligence and passion mingle and delight each other, the absurd man discovers a discipline that will make up the greatest of his strengths. The required diligence and doggedness and lucidity thus resemble the conqueror's attitude. To create is likewise to give a shape to one's fate. For all these characters, their work defines them at least as much as it is defined by them. The actor taught us this: There is no frontier between being and appearing.Collection: Attitude
The best are led to make greater demands upon themselves. As for those who succumb, they did not deserve to survive.Collection: Demand
At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman.Collection: Life
Do not be surprised. I do not like writers and I cannot stand their lies. They speak so as not to listen to themselves speak. If they did listen, they would know that they are nothing and then they would no longer be able to speak.Collection: Lying
The love of God is a hard love. It demands total self-surrender, disdain of our human personality. And yet it alone can reconcile us to suffering and the deaths of children, it alone can justify them, since we cannot understand them, and we can only make God's will ours.Collection: Children
The temptation shared by all forms of intelligence: cynicism.Collection: Temptation
In art, rebellion is consummated and perpetuated in the act of real creation, not in criticism or commentary.Collection: Art
I understood, by dint of digging into my memories, that modesty helped me to shine, humility helped me to triumph and virtue to oppress.Collection: Memories
Cruel irony, the poor man tormented with hunger feeds those who plead his case.Collection: Men
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."Collection: Art
Even when one sits in the prisoner's dock, it is interesting to hear talk about oneself.Collection: Interesting
I felt as I hadn't felt for ages. I had a foolish desire to burst into tears. for the first time I'd realized how all these people loathed me.Collection: People
I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't.Collection: Life
But sometimes it takes more courage to live than to shoot yourself.Collection: Sometimes
We [writers] must know that we can never escape the common misery and that our only justification, if indeed there is a justification, is to speak up, insofar as we can, for those who cannot do so.Collection: Writing
There is no more futile punishment than futile and hopeless labor.Collection: Success
To me, art is not a solitary delight. It is a means of stirring the greatest number of men by providing them with a privileged image of our common joys and woes.Collection: Art
Liberty is dangerous, as hard to get along with as it is exciting.Collection: Liberty
Rule: Start by looking for what is valid in every man.Collection: Men
Life continues, and some mornings, weary of the noise, discouraged by the prospect of the interminable work to keep after, sickened also by the madness of the world that leaps at you from the newspaper, finally convinced that I will not be equal to it and that I will disappoint everyone - all I want to do is sit down and wait for evening. This is what I feel like, and sometimes I yield to it.Collection: Morning
Freedom is the right to never have to lie.Collection: Lying
In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.Collection: Summer
The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.Collection: Struggle
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.Collection: Winter
We are rebels for a cause, poets with a dream, and we won’t let this world die without a fight.Collection: Fighting
The absurd hero’s refusal to hope becomes his singular ability to live in the present with passion.Collection: Hero
All I know of morality I learned from football.Collection: Football
For the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed so brotherly, made me realize that I’d been happy, and that I was happy still.Collection: Firsts
I’d have given ten conversations with Einstein for a first meeting with a pretty chorus girl.Collection: Firsts