Top 997 Quotes & Sayings by Albert Camus - Page 4

On certain mornings, as we turn a corner, an exquisite dew falls on our heart and then vanishes. But the freshness lingers, and this, always, is what the heart needs. The earth must have risen in just such a light the morning the world was born.

If something is going to happen to me, I want to be there.

Democracy is not the law of the majority but the protection of the minority.

Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?

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.

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

The real 19th century prophet was Dostoevsky, not Karl Marx.

In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

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.

The tragedy is not that we are alone, but that we cannot be. At times I would give anything in the world to no longer be connected by anything to this universe of men.

To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.

After awhile you could get used to anything.

Find your happiness in yourself.

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

Poor and free rather than rich and enslaved. Of course, men want to be both rich and free, and this is what leads them at times to be poor and enslaved.

The innocent is the person who explains nothing

Life is the sum of your choices.

We must admit that today conformity is on the Left. To be sure, the Right is not brilliant. But the Left is in complete decadence, a prisoner of words, caught in its own vocabulary, capable merely of stereotyped replies, constantly at a loss when faced with truth, from which it nevertheless claimed to derive its laws. The Left is schizophrenic and needs doctoring through pitiless self-criticism, exercise of the heart, close reasoning, and a little modesty.

We do not know how to eliminate evil, but we do know how to feed some of the hungry and heal some of the infirmed.

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

What is a rebel? A man who says no.

To grow old is to pass from passion to compassion.

A man is more a man through the things he keeps to himself than through those he says.

It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.

Where there is no hope, we must invent it.

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

We all carry within us places of exile, our crimes, our ravages. Our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to transform them in ourselves and others.

People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves.

When there is no hope, one must invent hope.

If it adapts itself to what the majority of our society wants, art will be a meaningless recreation.

An achievement is a bondage. It obliges one to a higher achievement.

When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

There is no shame in preferring happiness.

When silence or tricks of language contribute to maintaining an abuse that must be reformed or a suffering that can be relieved, then there is no other solution but to speak out and show the obscenity hidden under the verbal cloak.

Believe me there is no such thing as great suffering, great regret, great memory....everything is forgotten, even a great love. That's what's sad about life, and also what's wonderful about it. There is only a way of looking at things, a way that comes to you every once in a while. That's why it's good to have had love in your life after all, to have had an unhappy passion- it gives you an alibi for the vague despairs we all suffer from.

When I was young I asked more of people than they could give: everlasting friendship, endless feeling. Now I know to ask less of them than they can give: a straightforward companionship. And their feelings, their friendship, their generous actions seem in my eyes to be wholly miraculous: a consequence of grace alone.

If we believe in nothing, if nothing has any meaning and if we can affirm no values whatsoever, then everything is possible and nothing has any importance.

It's better to bet on this life than on the next.

It is not the world that is absurd, nor human thought: the absurd arises when the human need to understand meets the unreasonableness of the world, when 'my appetite for the absolute and for unity' meets 'the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle.'

She was waiting, but she didn't know for what. She was aware only of her solitude, and of the penetrating cold, and of a greater weight in the region of her heart.

Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders.

Life should be lived to the point of tears

That's love, giving everything, sacrificing all without hope of return.

A loveless world is a dead world.

To lose one's life is no great matter; when the time comes I'll have the courage to lose mine. But what's intolerable is to see one's life being drained of meaning, to be told there's no reason for existing. A man can't live without some reason for living.

I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying). I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions.

Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.

It is easy to shield the outer body from poisoned arrows, but it is impossible to shield the mind from the poisoned darts that originate within itself. Greed, anger, foolishness and the infatuations of egoism - these four poisoned darts originate within the mind and infect it with deadly poison.

There is scarcely any passion without struggle.

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

Get scared. It will do you good. Smoke a bit, stare blankly at some ceilings, beat your head against some walls, refuse to see some people, paint and write. Get scared some more. Allow your little mind to do nothing but function. Stay inside, go out - I don't care what you'll do; but stay scared as hell. You will never be able to experience everything. So, please, do poetical justice to your soul and simply experience yourself.

When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune.

The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown.

After all perhaps the greatness of art lies in the perpetual tension between beauty and pain, the love of men and the madness of creation, unbearable solitude and the exhausting crowd, rejection and consent.

Truth, like light, is blinding. Lies, on the other hand, are a beautiful dusk, which enhances the value of each object.

Like great works, deep feelings always mean more than they are conscious of saying.

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.

Liberty is the right not to lie.

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.

We all have a weakness for beauty.