Top 997 Quotes & Sayings by Albert Camus - Page 17

The absurd is a shadow cast over everything we do and even if we try to live life as if it has meaning as if there are reasons for doing things the absurd will linger in the back of our minds as a nagging doubt that perhaps there is no point.

How many crimes are permitted simply because their authors could not endure being wrong.

he's incapable of suffering for a long time, or being happy for a long time. Which means that he's incapable of anything really worth while.

The only way out [of international dictatorship] is to place international law above governments, which means [...] that there must be a parliament for making it, and that parliament must be constituted by means of worldwide elections in which all nations will take part.

I longed to be forgotten in order to be able to complain to myself.

How had I not seen that there was nothing more important than an execution, and that when you come right down to it, it was the only thing a man could truly be interested in?

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.

There is but one freedom, to put oneself right with death. After that everything is possible.

No code of ethics and no effort are justifiable a priori in the face of the cruel mathematics that command our condition.

[Paris] is dirty. It has pigeons and black yards. The people have white skin.

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.

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.

In Oran, as elsewhere, for want of time and thought, people have to love one another without knowing it.

Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself.

Since the order of the world is shaped by death, mightn't it be better for God if we refuse to believe in Him, and struggle with all our might against death without raising our eyes towards the heaven where He sits in silence?

Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him?

They came to know the incorrigible sorrow of all prisoners and exiles, which is to live in company with a memory that serves no purpose.

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.

It would be unjust, and moreover Utopian, for Shakespeare to direct the shoemakers' union. But it would be equally disastrous forthe shoemakers' union to ignore Shakespeare.

Being is good, but getting rich is better.... If the gods had only the riches of men's adoration, they would be as poor as poor Caligula.

We are not certain, we are never certain.

In fact, it comes to this: nobody is capable of really thinking about anyone, even in the worst calamity. For really to think about someone means thinking about that person every minute of the day, without letting one’s thoughts be diverted by anything- by meals, by a fly that settles on one’s cheek, by household duties, or by a sudden itch somewhere. But there are always flies and itches. That’s why life is difficult to live.

I explained to him, however, that my nature was such that my physical needs often got in the way of my feelings.

The principle can be established that for a man who does not cheat what he believes to be true must determine his actions.

Finally, and most of all, words failed him.

The world is unimportant and whoever recognizes this conquers his liberty.

History has shown that the less people read, the more books they buy.

At that time, I often thought that if I had had to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but look up at the sky flowing overhead, little by little I would have gotten used to it.

In fact, other people create for lack of power. I, on the other hand, do not need a work: I live.

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

And then came human beings; humans wanted to cling but there was nothing to cling to.

A fate is not a punishment.

...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'.

The soul of a murderer is blind

More and more, revolution has found itself delivered into the hands of its bureaucrats and doctrinaires on the one hand, and to the enfeebled and bewildered masses on the other.

In this vast country that he had so loved, he was alone.

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