Albert Camus

“We love people not because for good they did for us, but for good we did for them.”

“For people like me, the face just says that we die alone.”

“Why I'm an artist, not a philosopher? Because I think in words rather than ideas.”

“We live in a world where one needs to choose - to be the victim or the executioner, and nothing else.”

“When you have an elevated spirit and a miserable heart, you write great things and do the poor.”

“We [Raymond and Meursault] stared at each other without blinking, and everything came to a stop there between the sea, the sand, and the sun, and the double silence of the flute and the water. It was then that I realized that you could either shoot or not shoot.”

“Si je me demande à quoi juger que telle question est plus pressante que telle autre, je réponds que c'est aux actions qu'elles engage.”

“Le suicide est une solution à l'absurde.”

“Le jugement du corps vaut bien celui de l'esprit et le corps recule devant l'anéantissement. Nous prenons l'habitude de vivre avant d'acquérir celle de penser.”

“La lassitude est la fin des actes d'une vie machinale, mais elle inaugure en même temps le mouvement de la conscience. Elle l'éveille et elle provoque la suite. La suite, c'est le retour inconscient dans la chaîne, ou c'est l'éveil définitif. Au bout de l'éveil vient avec le temps, la conséquence: suicide ou rétablissement.”

“Il n'y a pas d'expérience de la mort. Au sens propre, n'est expérimenté que ce qui a été vécu et rendu conscient. Ici, c'est tout juste s'il est possible de parler de l'expérience de la mort des autres. C'est un succédané, une vue de l'esprit et nous n'en sommes jamais très convaincus.”

“Penser, c'est réapprendre à voir, à être attentif, c'est diriger sa conscience, c'est faire de chaque idée et de chaque image, à la façon de Proust, un lieu privilégié”

“Ce que je ne comprends pas est sans raison. Le monde est peuplé de ces irrationnels. A lui seul dont je ne comprends pas la signification unique, il n'est qu'un immense irrationnel.”

“l'homme se trouve devant l'irrationnel. Il sent en lui son désir de bonheur et de raison. L'absurde naît de cette confrontation entre l'appel humain et le silence déraisonnable du monde.”

“ou nous ne sommes pas libres et Dieu tout-puissant est responsable du mal. Ou nous sommes libres et responsables mais Dieu n'est pas tout-puissant. Toutes les subtilités d'écoles n'ont rien ajouté ni soustrait au tranchant de ce paradoxe.”

“On veut gagner de l'argent pour vivre heureux et tout l'effort et le meilleur d'une vie se concentrent pour le gain de cet argent. le bonheur est oublié, le moyen pris pour la fin.”

“Travailler et créer "pour rien", sculpter dans l'argile, savoir que sa création n'a pas d'avenir, voir son oeuvre détruite en un jour en étant conscient que, profondément, cela n'a pas plus d'importance que de bâtir pour des siècles, c'est la sagesse difficile que la pensée absurde autorise.”

“Les idées sont le contraire de la pensée.”

“Je disais que le monde est absurde et j'allais trop vite. ce monde en lui-même n'est pas raisonnable, c'est tout ce qu'on en peut dire. Mais ce qui est absurde, c'est la confrontation de cet irrationnel et de ce désir éperdu de clarté dont l'appel résonne au plus profond de l'homme. L'absurde dépend autant de l'homme que du monde. Il est pour le moment leur seul lien. Il les scelle l'un à l'autre comme la haine seule peut river les êtres. C'est tout ce que je puis discerner clairement dans cet univers sans mesure où mon aventure se poursuit.”

“Vivre, naturellement, n'est jamais facile. On continue à faire les gestes que l'existence commande, pour beaucoup de raisons dont la première est l'habitude. Mourir volontairement suppose qu'on a reconnu, même instinctivement, le caractère dérisoire de cette habitude, l'absence de toute raison profonde de vivre, le caractère insensé de cette agitation quotidienne et l'inutilité de la souffrance.”

“In a moment, when I throw myself down among the absinthe plants to bring their scent into my body, I shall know, appearances to the contrary, that I am fulfilling a truth which is the sun's and which will also be my death's. In a sense, it is indeed my life that I am staking here, a life that tastes of warm stone, that is full of the signs of the sea and the rising song of the crickets. The breeze is cool and the sky blue. I love this life with abandon and wish to speak of it boldly: it makes me proud of my human condition. Yet people have often told me: there's nothing to be proud of. Yes, there is: this sun, this sea, my heart leaping with youth, the salt taste of my body and this vast landscape in which tenderness and glory merge in blue and yellow. It is to conquer this that I need my strength and my resources. Everything here leaves me intact, I surrender nothing of myself, and don no mask: learning patiently and arduously how to live is enough for me, well worth all their arts of living.”

“Then there was the church and the villagers on the sidewalks, the red geraniums on the graves in the cemetery, Perez fainting (he crumpled over like a rag doll), the blood-red earth spilling over Maman's casket, the white flesh of the roots mixed in with it, more people, voices, the village, waiting in front of a cafe, the incessant drone of the motor, and my joy when the bus entered the nest of lights that was Algiers and I knew I was going to go to bed and sleep for twelve hours.”

“There are accidents that last the whole life.”

“Maybe Christ died for somebody but not for me.”

“What on earth prompted you to take a hand in this?""I don't know. My… my code of morals, perhaps.""Your code of morals. What code, if I may ask?""Comprehension.”

“Anche la lotta verso la cima basta a riempire il cuore di un uomo. Bisogna immaginare Sisifo felice.”

“We are living in the era of premeditation and the perfect crime. Our criminals are no longer helpless children who could plead love as their excuse. On the contrary, they are adults and the have the perfect alibi: philosophy, which can be used for any purpose - even for transforming murderers into judges.”

“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.”

“Freedom is not a reward or a decoration that you toast in champagne. On the contrary, it's hard graft and a long-distance run, all alone, very exhausting. Alone in a dreary room, alone in the dock before the judges, and alone to make up your mind, before yourself and before the judgement of others. At the end of every freedom there is a sentence, which is why freedom is too heavy to bear.”

“I was wrong, after all, to tell you that the essential was to avoid judgement. The essential is being able to permit oneself everything, even if, from time to time, one has to profess vociferously one's own infamy.”

“Inasmuch as every judge some day ends up as a penitent, one had to travel the road in the opposite direction and practice the profession of penitent to be able to end up as a judge.”

“In short, for me to live happily it was essential for the creatures I chose not to live at all. They must receive their life, sporadically, only at my bidding.”

“Of course, true love is exceptional - two or three times a century, more or less. The rest of the time there is vanity or boredom.”

“I loved them, according to the hallowed expression, which amounts to saying that I never loved any of them.”

“I am well aware that one can't get along without domineering or being served. Every man needs slaves as he needs fresh air. Commanding is breathing - you agree with me? And even the most destitute manage to breathe.”

“That's the way man is, cher monsieur. He has two faces: he can't love without self-love.”

“But do you know why we are always more just and generous toward the dead? The reason is simple. With them there is no obligation. They leave us free and we can take our time, fit the testimonial between a cocktail party and a nice little mistress, in our spare time, in short.”

“The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious. Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.”

“Where is the absurdity of the world? Is it this resplendent glow or the memory of its absence? With so much sun in my memory, how could I have wagered on nonsense? People around me are amazed; so am I, at times. I could tell them, as I tell myself, that it was in fact the sun that helped me, and that the very thickness of its light coagulates the universe and its forms into a dazzling darkness.”

“If the world were clear, art would not exist.”

“And with pain and joy, their hearts learned to hear that double lesson which leads to a happy death.”

“On good days, if you trust life, life has to answer you.”

“For instance, I never complained that my birthday was overlooked; people were even surprised, with a touch of admiration, by my discretion on this subject. But the reason for my disinterestedness was even more discreet: I longed to be forgotten in order to be able to complain to myself... Once my solitude was thoroughly proved, I could surrender to the charms of a virile self-pity.”

“For instance, I had a friend I generally avoided. He rather bored me, and, besides, he was something of a moralist. But when he was on his deathbed, I was there - don't worry... And when, in addition, it's a suicide! Lord, what a delightful commotion!”

“No one realises that some individuals consume herculesque forces only to be normal.”

“Life is crammed with events that encourage us to want to get old.”

“A life, whose purpose is money, is death.”

“There are more things in people that are rather worth of admiration than contempt.”

“Deepest thoughts and major works eventually become insignificant.”

“Poverty is a state whose feature is generosity.”