A Quote by Albert Camus

Imagination offers people consolation for what they cannot be, and humor for what they actually are.

Albert Camus

Quote Topics

Actually Cannot Consolation Humor Imagination Offers People

Quote Author

Albert Camus
French - Philosopher
November 7, 1913 - January 4, 1960

The imagination is not the consolation people pretend. It can even be regarded as the admission of some sort of failure.

Edmund White

For those who need consolation no means of consolation is so effective as the assertion that in their case no consolation is possible: it implies so great a degree of distinction that they at once hold up their heads again.

Friedrich Nietzsche

History offers some consolation by reminding us that sin has flourished in every age.

Will Durant

I think firmly that art is no use to anyone unless it offers some kind of consolation or hope.

Nick Hornby

I think humor is a really important way of creating solidarity - like, through humor you can make people realize that certain situations, where they thought they were alone, are actually shared by everyone.

Elif Batuman

Consolation has been wrongly reviled. Consolation is not apathy or inaction. It is not closing one's eyes to the evils of the world. Rather, consolation is the first step in regaining personal equilibrium and strength, which necessarily precedes the ability to act.

Vera Nazarian

Humor and laughter are not necessarily the same thing. Humor permits us to see into life from a fresh and gracious perspective. We learn to take ourselves more lightly in the presence of good humor. Humor gives us the strength to bear what cannot be changed, and the sight to see the human under the pompous.

Joan D. Chittister

Actually, it's the other way round. In a poor country, the only consolation people can have is the one that comes from their beliefs.

Orhan Pamuk

No one knows very much about the life of another. This ignorance becomes vivid, if you love another. Love sets the imagination on fire, and, also, eventually, chars the imagination into a harder element: imagination cannot match love, cannot plunge so deep, or range so wide.

James Baldwin

Haven't you noticed that we women daydream infinitely less than you men? We can't anticipate pleasure in our imagination or keep suffering out our lives with some imaginary consolation.Whatever is,is.Imagintion! It's so paltry!Yes,when you've grown older,as I have,you occasionally make do with the poor comedy of the imagination.

Jens Peter Jacobsen

The thing I have learned, especially in the Internet age, probably the easiest thing in the world is to declare that something is not funny. I mean it's not actually humor to say something is not funny, but it is viewed by a lot of people - and by that I mean mainly snarky young Internet men - as a kind of humor in and of itself is putting down other people's efforts at humor. And I don't care that much anymore about that because I know how easy that is to do.

Dave Barry

I've always felt that what I have going for me is not my imagination, because everyone has an imagination. What I have is a relentlessly controlled imagination. What looks like wild invention is actually quite carefully calculated.

Terry Pratchett

Wit penetrates; humor envelops. Wit is a function of verbal intelligence; humor is imagination operating on good nature.

Peggy Noonan

To reduce the imagination to a state of slavery --even though it would mean the elimination of what is commonly called happiness --is to betray all sense of absolute justice within oneself. Imagination alone offers me some intimation of what can be.

Andre Breton

I can't fall apart every time I mention that my mother's gone. I actually laugh about stories or things or situations. Of course there's a wound that will never be patched up, but I approach it with humor. Of course, I don't overlook it and go straight for the humor, but I think we have to have humor to move forward.