Quotes by Albert Camus

She was waiting, but she didnt 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.

I like these people swarming on the sidewalks, wedged into a little space of houses and canals, hemmed in by fogs, cold lands, and the sea streaming like a wet wash. I like them, for they are double. They are here and elsewhere.

he doesnt play the game ... He refuses to lie. Lying is not only saying what isnt true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels. We all do it, every day, to make life simpler. But Meursault, contrary to appearances, doesnt want to make life simpler. He says what he is, he refuses to hide his feelings and society immediately feels threatened.

As a remedy to life in society I would suggest the big city. Nowadays, it is the only desert within our means.

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

I felt as though I was partly unlearning what i had never learned and yet knew so well: I mean, how to live.

Instead of killing and dying in order to produce the being that we are not, we have to live and let live in order to create what we are.

Yes, one can wager war in this world, ape love, torture one’s fellow man, or merely say evil of one’s neighbor while knitting. But, in certain cases, carrying on, merely continuing, is superhuman.

If I convince myself that this life has no other aspect than that of the absurd, if I feel that its whole equilibrium depends on that perpetual opposition between my conscious revolt and the darkness in which it struggles, if I admit that my freedom has no meaning except in relation to its limited fate, then I must say that what counts is not the best living but the most living.

Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.

If Christianity is pessimistic as to man, it is optimistic as to human destiny. Well, I can say that, pessimistic as to human destiny, I am optimistic as to man.

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.

Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present.

Thinking of the future, establishing aims for oneself, having preferences—all this presupposes a belief in freedom, even if one occasionally ascertains that one doesnt feel it.

If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.

Dont you think our society is designed to kill in that way? Of course, youve surely heard about those tiny fish in the rivers of Brazil which attack the swimmer by the thousands, eat him up in a few moments in quick little mouthfuls and leave only a perfectly clean skeleton behind? So, thats the way theyre constituted. Do you want a clean life, like everyone else? Of course the answer is yes. How could you not? Fine. Well clean you up. Heres a job, heres a family, heres some organized leisure. And the little teeth bite into the flesh, right down to the bone. But im being unfair. I shouldnt have said, the way theyre constituted, because after all, its our way, too: its a case of who strips whom.

Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn’t have to be a walk during which you’ll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don’t find meaning but steal some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.

Between the desolate earth and the colorless sky appeared an Image of the ungrateful world in which, for the first time, he came to himself at last. On this earth, restored to the despair of innocence, a traveler lost in a primitive world, he regained contact, and with his list pressed to his chest, his face flattened against the glass, he calculated his hunger for himself and for the certainty of the splendors dormant within him. He wanted to crush himself into that mud, to reenter the earth by immersing himself in that clay, to stand on that limitless plain covered with dirt, stretching his arms to the sooty sponge of the sky, as though confronting the superb and despairing symbol of life itself, to affirm his solidarity with the world at its worst, to declare himself lifes accomplice even in its thanklessness and its filth. Then the great impulse that had sustained him collapsed for the first time since he left Prague. Mersault pressed his tears and his lips against the cold pane. Again the glass blurred, the landscape disappeared.

...we rarely confide in those who are better than we. Rather, we are more inclined to flee their society. Most often, on the other hand, we confess to those who are like us and who share our weaknesses. Hence we dont want to improve ourselves and be bettered, for we should first have to be judged in default. We merely wish to be pitied and encouraged in the course we have chosen. In short, we should like, at the same time, to cease being guilty and yet not to make the effort of cleansing ourselves.