Albert Camus

“There's always been war," said Veillard. "But people quickly get accustomed to peace. So they think it's normal. No, war is what's normal.”

“I would have liked to have tried explaining to him cordially, almost affectionately, that I had never been able to truly feel remorse for anything. My mind was always on what was coming next, today or tomorrow.”

“They were silent, humiliated by this return of the defeated, furious at their own silence, but the more it was prolonged the less capable they were of breaking it.”

“În orice caz, eu poate nu eram sigur de ceea ce mă interesează cu adevărat, dar ştiam precis ceea ce nu mă interesează.”

“Îţi faci întotdeauna idei exagerate despre ceea ce nu cunoşti.”

“I have always loved everything about you. Even what I didn’t understand. And I have always known that, at heart, I would have you no different. But most people don’t know how to love. Nothing is enough for them. They must have their dreams. It’s the only thing they do well. Dreaming. They dream up obligations. New ones every day. They long for undiscovered countries, fresh demands, another call. While some of us are left with the knowledge that love can never wait. A shared bed, a hand in yours, that’s the only thing that matters. The worst thing of all is fear. The fear of being alone.”

“Am înţeles atunci că un om care n-ar fi trăit decît o singură zi ar putea, fără greutate, să trăiască o sută de ani în închisoare. Ar avea destule amintiri ca să nu se plictisească. Într-un sens, acesta era un avantaj.”

“Poverty is a fortress without drawbridges.”

“Certaines personnes parlent pendant leur sommeil, les conférenciers eux parlent pendant le sommeil des autres.”

“We call love what binds us to certain creatures only by reference to a collective way of seeing for which books and legends are responsible.”

“When a man has learned how to remain alone with his suffering, how to overcome his longing to flee, then he has little left to learn.”

“The evil in the world comes almost always from ignorance, and goodwill can cause as much damage as ill-will if it is not enlightened. People are more often good than bad, though in fact that is not the question. But they are more or less ignorant and this is what one calls vice or virtue, the most appalling vice being the ignorance that thinks it knows everything and which consequently authorizes itself to kill. The murderer's soul is blind, and there is no true goodness or fine love without the greatest possible degree of clear-sightedness.”

“It is better for the intellectual not to talk all the time. To begin with, it would exhaust him, and, above all, it would keep him from thinking. He must create if he can, first and foremost, especially if his creation does not side-step the problems of his time.”

“To create today is to create dangerously. Any publication is an act, and that act exposes one to the passions of an age that forgives nothing.”

“Nothing is harder to understand than a symbolic work. A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing.”

“This very heart which is mine will forever remain indefinable to me. Between the certainty I have of my existence and the content I try to give to that assurance, the gap will never be filled. Forever I shall be a stranger to myself.”

“El mundo no puede ofrecer ya nada al hombre angustiado.”

“Veo que muchas personas mueren porque estiman que la vida no vale la pena vivirla. Veo a otras que, paradójicamente, se hacen matar por las ideas o ilusiones que les dan una razón para vivir.”

“But it's not easy. I've been thinking it over for years. While we loved each other we didn't need words to make ourselves understood. But people don't love forever. A time came when I should have found the words to keep her with me, only I couldn't.”

“Esta muerte que había mirado con el enloquecimiento de una bestia, comprendía que tener miedo de ella era tener miedo de la vida.”

“Sintió entonces de que modo la felicidad está cerca de las lágrimas.”

“No se vive más o menos largamente feliz. Se es feliz. Punto final. Y la muerte no impide nada -es un accidente de la felicidad en este caso.”

“Si tuviera que volver a comenzar mi vida", pues bien, la volvería a empezar igual que fue.”

“En una vida con la que sin embargo no sabía qué hacer.”

“Créeme, no hay gran dolor, grandes arrepentimientos, grandes recuerdos. Todo se olvida, incluso los grandes amores. Esto es lo que existe a la vez triste y exaltador en la vida. Hay solo cierta manera de ver las cosas, que surge de vez en cuando. Por esto es bueno a pesar de todo haber tenido un gran amor, una pasión desgraciada en su vida. Esto constituye por lo menos una coartada para las desesperaciones sin razón que nos agobian.”

“The rest of the story, to Grand's thinking, was very simple. The common lot of married couples. You get married, you go on loving a bit longer, you work. And you work so hard that it makes you forget to love. As the head of the office where Grand was employed hadn't kept his promise, Jeanne, too, had to work outside. At this point a little imagination was needed to grasp what Grand was trying to convey. Owing largely to fatigue, he gradually lost grip of himself, had less and less to say, and failed to keep alive the feeling in his wife that she was loved. An overworked husband, poverty, the gradual loss of hope in a better future, silent evenings at home, what chance had any passion of surviving such conditions? Probably Jeanne had suffered. And yet she'd stayed; of course one may often suffer a long time without knowing it. Thus years went by. Then, one day, she left him. Naturally she hadn't gone alone. "I was very fond of you, but now I'm so tired. I'm not happy to go, but one needn't be happy to make another start." That, more or less, was what she'd said in her letter. Grand, too, had suffered. And he, too, might, as Rieux pointed out, have made a fresh start. But no, he had lost faith. Only, he couldn't stop thinking about her. What he'd have liked to do was to write her a letter justifying himself. "But it's not easy," he told Rieux. "I've been thinking it over for years. While we loved each other we didn't need words to make ourselves understood. But people don't love forever. A time came when I should have found the words to keep her with me, only I couldn't.”

“El mundo solo dice siempre una cosa, e interesa, después cansa.”

“Él mordió sus labios y durante segundos, boca contra boca, aspiró esa tibieza que le traspasaba como si estrechara el mundo entre sus brazos. Mientras tanto ella se agarraba a él, como ahogada, surgía por impulsos de este gran agujero profundo en el que estaba arrojada, rechazaba entonces sus labios que atraía después, volviendo a caer entonces en las aguas negras y heladas que la quemaban como un pueblo de dioses.”

“La voluntad sin freno de apresar sobre estos labios vivos todo el sentido de este mundo inhumano y dormido, como un silencio encerrado en su boca.”

“Pero a veces se necesita más valor para vivir que para matarse.”

“Esta vida que me devora no la hubiera conocido completamente, y lo que me horroriza en la muerte es la certeza que me traerá de que mi vida ha sido consumida sin mí. Al margen, ¿comprende?”

“El amor que me tienen no me obliga a nada.”

“No haría de mi vida una experiencia. Sería la experiencia de mi vida.”

“Cada vez que pienso en este camino de dolor y de alegría dentro de mí, sé bien, y con que arrebato, que la partida que juego es la más seria, la más exaltadora de todas.”

“Pienso en los labios que he besado, en el niño que fui, en la locura de vida y de ambición que me arrastra en ciertos momentos. Soy todo al mismo tiempo. Estoy seguro de que hay momentos en que no me reconocería usted. Extremado en la desgracia, desmedido en la felicidad, no sé como decirlo.”

“No tenemos tiempo para ser nosotros mismos. Solo tenemos tiempo para ser felices.”

“Pero a nuestra edad no se ama, veamos. Se gusta uno a otro, esto es todo. Más tarde, cuando uno es viejo e impotente, puede amar. A nuestra edad, creemos que amamos.Esto es todo, vaya.”

“We need the sweet pain of anticipation to tell us we are really alive.”

“Mitten im tiefen Winter wurde mir endlich bewusst, dass ich einen unbesiegbaren Sommer in mir trug.”

“Anyway it was an idea of mother's and she often used to repeat it, that you ended up getting used to everything.”

“Everything is true, and nothing is true!”

“After awhile you could get used to anything.”

“To stay or to go, it amounted to the same thing.”

“O light! This is the cry of all the characters of ancient drama brought face to face with their fate. This last resort was ours, too, and I knew it now. In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.”

“A man defineshimself by his make-believe as well as by his sincere impulses.”

“Ne pleurez pas. Non, non, ne pleurez pas! Vous voyez bien que c'est le jour de la justification. Quelque chose s'élève à cette heure qui est notre témoignage à nous autres révoltés: Yanek n'est plus un meurtrier. Un bruit terrible! Il a suffi d'un bruit terrible et le voilà retourné à la joie de l'enfance. Vous souvenez-vous de son rire? Il riait sans raison parfois. Comme il était jeune! Il doit rire maintenant. Il doit rire, la face contre la terre!”

“Il n'y a pas d'amour loin de Dieu.Kaliayev: Si. L'amour pour la créature.”

“Que voulez-vouz, je ne m'intéresse pas aux idées, moi, je m'intéresse aux personnes.”

“Je suis venu pour tuer un homme, non pour l'aimer ni pour saluer sa différence.”

“Pourquoi? Tes yeux sont toujours tristes, Dora. Il faut être gaie, il faut être fière. La beauté existe, la joie existe! « Aux lieux tranquilles où mon coeur te souhaitait...Dora: Je respirais un éternel été... »”