Albert Camus

“Impacientados por el presente, enemigos del pasado y privados del porvenir, éramos semejantes a aquellos que la justicia o el odio de los hombres tienen entre rejas”

“Nu există decît o problemă filosofică cu adevărat impor­tantă : sinuciderea. A hotărî dacă viaţa merită sau nu să fie trăită înseamnă a răspunde la problema fundamentală a filosofiei. Restul, dacă lumea are trei dimensiuni, dacă spiritul are nouă sau douăsprezece categorii, vine după aceea. Aces­tea sînt doar jocuri; dar mai întîi trebuie să răspunzi. Şi dacă e adevărat, după cum susţine Nietzsche, că un filosof, pentru a fi vrednic de stimă, trebuie să dea primul exemplul, înţele­gem cît de important este răspunsul, de vreme ce el va pre­cede gestul definitiv. Iată nişte evidenţe sensibile inimii, dar pe care trebuie să le adîncim pentru câ mintea noastră să le vadă limpede.”

“I know simply that the sky will last longer than I.”

“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. ”

“I knew that I had shattered the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I'd been happy. Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness. ”

“It seems that the people of Oran are like that friend of Flaubert who, on the point of death, casting a last glance at the irreplaceable earth, exclaimed: "Close the window, it's too beautiful.”

“All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant's revolving door.”

“If one could only say just once: 'this is clear', all would be saved”

“Have you no hope at all? And do you really live with the thought that when you die, you die, and nothing remains?" "Yes," I said.”

“Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter.”

“I've never really had much of an imagination. But still I would try to picture the exact moment when the beating of my heart would no longer be going on inside my head.”

“The reasoning is classic in its clarity. If God does not exist, Kirilov is god. If God does not exist, Kirilov must kill himself. Kirilov must therefore kill himself to become god. That logic is absurd, but it is what is needed.”

“A man wants to earn money in order to be happy, and his whole effort and the best of a life are devoted to the earning of that money. Happiness is forgotten; the means are taken for the end.”

“The best are led to make greater demands upon themselves. As for those who succumb, they did not deserve to survive.”

“Astazi a murit mama. Sau poate ieri, nu stiu. Am primit o telegrama de la azil: "Mama decedata. Înmormîntarea mîine.Sincere condoleanþe." Asta nu înseamna nimic. Poate ca a fost ieri.”

“Entre mi colchoneta y la tabla de la cama, había encontrado, en efecto, un viejo pedazo de periódico casi pegado a la tela, amarillento y transparente. Relataba un suceso cuyo comienzo faltaba, pero que debía haber acontecido en Checoslovaquia. Un hombre había salido de una aldea checa para hacer fortuna. Al cabo de veinticinco años, había regresado, rico, con una mujer y un niño. Su madre regentaba un hotel con su hermana en la aldea natal. Para darles una sorpresa, dejó a su mujer y a su hijo en otro alojamiento y fue al hotel de su madre, que no lo reconoció cuando entró. Por broma, tomó una habitación. Había dejado ver su dinero. Durante la noche, su madre y su hermana lo asesinaron a martillazos para robarle y arrojaron su cuerpo al río. Por la mañana vino la mujer y reveló sin darse cuenta la identidad del viajero. La madre se ahorcó. La hermana se arrojó a un pozo. Debí de leer esta historia miles de veces. Por una parte, era inverosímil. Por otra, era natural. Me parecía, de todos modos, que el viajero lo había merecido un poco y que nunca se debe jugar.”

“I said that the world is absurd, but I was too hasty. This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart.”

“Creating is living doubly. The groping, anxious quest of a Proust, his meticulous collecting of flowers, of wallpapers, and of anxieties, signifies nothing else.”

“Even men without a gospel have their Mount of Olives. And one must not fall asleep on theirs either.”

“This absurd, godless world is, then, peopled with men who think clearly and have ceased to hope. And I have not yet spoken of the most absurd character, who is the creator.”

“In Italian museums are sometimes found little painted screens that the priest used to hold in front of the face of condemned men to hide the scaffold from them.”

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

“The actors of the era knew they were excommunicated. Entering the profession amounted to choosing Hell. And the Church discerned in them her worst enemies.”

“The actor's realm is that of the fleeting. Of all kinds of fame, it is known, his is the most ephemeral. At least, this is said in conversation. But all kinds of fame are ephemeral. From the point of view of Sirius, Goethe's works in ten thousand years will be dust and his name forgotten.”

“What more ghastly image can be called up than that of a man betrayed by his body who, simply because he did not die in time, lives out the comedy while awaiting the end, face to face with that God he does not adore, serving him as he served life, kneeling before a void and arms outstretched toward a heaven without eloquence that he knows to be also without depth?”

“What I believe to be true I must therefore preserve. What seems to me so obvious, even against me, I must support.”

“There is no longer a single idea explaining everything, but an infinite number of essences giving a meaning to an infinite number of objects. The world comes to a stop, but also lights up.”

“Thinking is learning all over again how to see, directing one's consciousness, making of every image a privileged place.”

“I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I cannot know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. ”

“Always go too far, because that's where you'll find the truth”

“the play of the toughest and most lucid mind are at the same time both lavished and squandered.”

“Here lives a free man. Nobody serves him.”

“For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers.”

“What is there more real, for instance, in our universe than a man's life, and how can we hope to preserve it better than a realistic film? But under what conditions is such a film possible? Under purely imaginary conditions. We should have to presuppose, in fact, an ideal camera focused on the man day and night and constantly registering his every move. The very projection of such a film would last a lifetime and could be seen only by an audience of people willing to waste their lives in watching someone else's life in great detail. Even under such conditions, such an unimaginable film would not be realistic for the simple reason that the reality of a man's life is not limited to the spot in which he happens to be. It lies also in other lives that give shape to his--lives of people he loves, to begin with, which would have to be filmed too, and also lives of unknown people, influential and insignificant, fellow citizens, policemen, professors, invisible comrades from the mines and foundries, diplomats and dictators, religious reformers, artists who create myths that are decisive for out conduct--humble representatives, in short, of the sovereign chance that dominates the most routine existences. Consequently, there is but one possible realistic film: one that is constantly shown us by an invisible camera on the world's screen. The only realistic artist, then, is God, if he exists. All other artists are, ipso facto, unfaithful to reality.”

“But in order to speak about all and to all, one has to speak of what all know and of the reality common to us all. The seas, rains, necessity, desire, the struggle against death--these are things that unite us all. We resemble one another in what we see together, in what we suffer together. Dreams change from individual, but the reality of the world is common to us all. Striving towards realism is therefore legitimate, for it is basically related to the artistic adventure.”

“I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't.”

“If Nietzsche is correct, that to shame a man is to kill him, then any honest attempt at autobiography will be an act of self-destruction.”

“For who would dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for a single moment's human suffering”

“I love life - that’s my real weakness. I love it so much that I am incapable of imagining what is not life.”

“I know that man is capable of great deeds. But if he isn't capable of great emotion, well, he leaves me cold.”

“Everyone tries to make his life a work of art. We want love to last and we know that it does not last; even if, by some miracle, it were to last a whole lifetime, it would still be incomplete. Perhaps, in this insatiable need for perpetuation, we should better understand human suffering, if we knew that it was eternal. It appears that great minds are, sometimes, less horrified by suffering than by the fact that it does not endure. In default of inexhaustible happiness, eternal suffering would at least give us a destiny. But we do not even have that consolation, and our worst agonies come to an end one day. One morning, after many dark nights of despair, an irrepressible longing to live will announce to us the fact that all is finished and that suffering has no more meaning than happiness.”

“It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.”

“Am well. Thinking of you always. Love”

“Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.”

“What is a rebel? A man who says no.”

“Sometimes at midnight, in the great silence of the sleep bound town, the doctor turned on his radio before going to bed for the few hours' sleep he allowed himself. And from the ends of the earth, across thousands of miles of land and sea, kindly, well-meaning speakers tried to voice their fellow-feeling, and indeed did so, but at the same time proved the utter incapacity of every man truly to share in the suffering that he cannot see. "Oran! Oran!" In vain the call rang over oceans, in vain Rieux listened hopefully; always the tide of eloquence began to flow, bringing home still more the unbridgeable gulf that lay between Grand and the speaker. "Oran, we're with you!" they called emotionally. But not, the doctor told himself, to love or to die together-- and that's the only way...”

“And it was in the midst of shouts rolling against the terrace wall in massive waves that waxed in volume and duration, while cataracts of colored fire fell thicker through the darkness, that Dr. Rieux resolved to compile this chronicle, so that he should not be one of those who hold their peace but should bear witness in favor of those plague-stricken people; so that some memorial of the injustice and outrage done them might endure; and to state quite simply what we learn in time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise.”

“Alas, after a certain age every man is responsible for his face.”

“After another moment's silence she mumbled that I was peculiar, that that was probably why she loved me but that one day I might disgust her for the very same reason.”

“J'ai souvent pensé alors que si l'on m'avait fait vivre dans un tronc d'arbre sec, sans autre occupaion que de regarder la fleur du ciel au-dessus de ma tête, je m'y serais peu à peu habitué. J'aurais attendu des passages d'oiseaux ou de rencontres de nuages comme j'attendais ici les curieuses cravates de mon avocat et comme, dans un autre monde, je patientais jusqu'au samedi pour étreindre le corps de Marie.”