Quotes by Albert Camus

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

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

We call first truths those we discover after all the others.

I know myself too well to believe in pure virtue.

There is dignity in work only when it is work freely accepted.

There is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.

To write is to become disinterested. There is a certain renunciation in art.

In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limits that it discovers in itself - limits where minds meet, and in meeting, begin to exist.

Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.

We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives... inside ourselves.

Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.

To be famous, in fact, one has only to kill ones landlady.

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.

Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature.

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.

Blessed are the hearts that can bend they shall never be broken.

I am not made for politics because I am incapable of wanting or accepting the death of the adversary.

For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium.

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 sea, rains, necessity, desire, the struggle against death... these are things that unite us all.

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