Top 100 Albert Camus Quotes
#3. No matter how the sun shone, the sea held forth no more promises.
Albert Camus
#4. In the vast reaches of the dry, cold night, thousands of stars were constantly appearing, and their sparkling icicles, loosened at once, began to slip gradually toward the horizon.
Albert Camus
#5. There is a solitude in poverty, but a solitude that gives everything back its value. At a certain level of wealth, the heavens themselves and the star-filled night are nature's riches.
Albert Camus
#6. To know oneself, one should assert oneself.
Albert Camus
#7. The language he used was that of a man who was sick and tired of the world he lived in - though he had much liking for his fellow men - and had resolved, for his part, to have no truck with injustice and compromises with the truth.
Albert Camus
#8. We must have one love, one great love in our life, since it gives us an alibi for all the moments when we are filled with despair.
Albert Camus
#9. Unhappiness is like marriage. We believe we chose it, but then it is choosing us. That is how it is, we can do nothing about it.
Albert Camus
#10. If God did not exist, we should have to invent him. If God did exist, we should have to abolish Him.
Albert Camus
#11. I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.
Albert Camus
#12. A man's rule of conduct and his scale of values have no meaning except through the quantity and variety of experiences he has been in a position to accumulate.
Albert Camus
#13. Poverty, first of all was never a misfortune for me; it was radiant with sunlight.. I owe it to my family, first of all, who lacked everything and who envied practically nothing.
Albert Camus
#14. And indeed it could be said that once the faintest stirring of hope became possible, the dominion of plague was ended.
Albert Camus
#15. Asked to state his opinion of me, he said that I was "all right" and, when told to explain what he meant by that, he replied that everyone knew what that meant.
Albert Camus
#17. I enjoyed my own nature to the fullest, and we all know there lies happiness, although, to soothe one another mutually, we occasionally pretend to condemn such joys as selfishness.
Albert Camus
#18. A practical rule: a man which is wise in one area may be silly in others.
Albert Camus
#19. The light outside seemed to be surging up against the window seeping through, and smearing the faces of the people facing it with a coat of yellow oil.
Albert Camus
#20. The kingdom of heaven will, in fact, appear on earth , but it will be ruled over by men a mere handful to begin with, who will be the Cassars, because they were the first to understand and later, with time, by all men.
Albert Camus
#21. For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.
Albert Camus
#22. If I try to reach myself, it is at the bottom of this light. And if I try to understand and savor this delicate taste which reveals the secret of the world, it is myself that I find at the depth of the universe. Myself, that is to say, this extreme emotion which frees me from my surroundings.
Albert Camus
#24. Marx's scientific Messianism is itself of bourgeois origin. Progress, the future of science, the cult of technology and
of production, are bourgeois myths, which in the nineteenth century became dogma.
Albert Camus
#25. A person's life purpose is nothing more than to rediscover, through the detours of art or love or passionate work, those one or two images in the presence of which his heart first opened.
Albert Camus
#26. Indeed, a climate of fear is not one that encourages reflection. However, it is my belief that, instead of using that fear as an excuse, we should recognize it as one of the prime causes of the current situation and try to find a remedy for it.
Albert Camus
#27. I was very fond of you, but now I'm so, so tired. I'm not happy to go, but one needn't be happy to make another start.
Albert Camus
#28. A man who has become conscious of the absurd is for ever bound to it.
Albert Camus
#29. But a man's beauty represents inner, functional truths: his face shows what he can do. And what is that compared to the magnificent uselessness of a woman's face? Mersault was aware of this now, delighting in his vanity and smiling at his secret demons.
Albert Camus
#30. [A writer] cannot serve today those who make history; he must serve those who are subject to it.
Albert Camus
#31. The future is the only kind of property that the masters willingly concede to the slaves.
Albert Camus
#32. And despite the clamors and the violence, we tried to preserve in our hearts the memory of a happy sea, of a remembered hill, the smile of a beloved face.
Albert Camus
#33. The tragedy is not that we are alone, but that we cannot be. At times I would give anything in the world to no longer be connected by anything to this universe of men.
Albert Camus
#34. There exists an obvious fact that seems utterly moral: namely, that a man is always a prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them. One has to pay something.
Albert Camus
#35. Some cry: 'Love me!!' Others: 'Don't love me!!' But a certain genus, the worst and most unhappy, cries: 'Don't love me and be faithful to me!!'
Albert Camus
#36. Whoever today speaks of human existence in terms of power, efficiency, and historical tasks is an actual or potential assassin.
Albert Camus
#37. People believe a man is in distress because his loved one dies in one day. But his real pain is less futile: it is that he finds out that sadness too does not last. Even pain has no meaning.
Albert Camus
#38. Is it not laughable that we believe in a sacred,infrangible law - thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not kill - in an existence characterized by perpetual lying and perpetual murder?
Albert Camus
#39. The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning.
Albert Camus
#40. Mother used to say that however miserable one is, there's always something to be thankful for. And each morning, when the sky brightened and light began to flood my cell, I agreed with her.
Albert Camus
#41. To two men living the same number of years, the world always provides the same sum of experiences. It is up to us to be conscious of them. Being aware of one's life, one's revolt, one's freedom, and to the maximum, is living, and to the maximum.
Albert Camus
#42. The true work of art is always on the human scale. It is essentially the one that says, 'less.
Albert Camus
#43. The great courage is to stare as squarely at the light as at death.
Albert Camus
#44. But when a man has had only four hours' sleep he isn't sentimental. He sees things as they are: that is to say, he sees them in the garish light of justice; hideous, witless justice.
Albert Camus
#45. I am strangely tired, not from having talked so much but at the mere thought of what I still have to say
Albert Camus
#46. Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. I got a telegram from the home: 'Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.' That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.
Albert Camus
#48. [Liberty] is a choreand a long-distance race, quite solitary, quite exhausting.
Albert Camus
#49. You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.
Albert Camus
#50. Nothing can discourage the appetite for divinity in the heart of man.
Albert Camus
#51. Stupidity has a knack for getting its way.
Albert Camus
#52. You haven't a heart! a woman told him on one occasion. She was wrong; he had one. It saw him through his twenty-hour day, when he hourly watched men dying who were meant to live. It enabled him to start anew each morning. He had just enough heart for that, ...
Albert Camus
#53. You were satisfied to serve the power of your nation and we dreamed of giving ours her truth. It was enough for you to serve the politics of reality whereas, in our wildest aberrations, we still had a vague conception of the politics of honor.
Albert Camus
#54. Here, where the gaze is stopped everywhere, the whole earth is designed so that the face turns upward and the gaze implores. Oh! I hate this world where we are reduced to God.
Albert Camus
#55. Up to
now man derived his coherence from his Creator. But from the moment that he consecrates his rupture
with Him, he finds himself delivered over to the fleeting moment, to the passing days, and to wasted
sensibility.
Albert Camus
#56. That is love, to give away everything, to sacrifice everything, without the slightest desire to get anything in return.3
Albert Camus
#57. Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.
Albert Camus
#58. I want to know if I can live with what I know, and only than.
Albert Camus
#59. Men are convinced of your arguments, your sincerity, and the seriousness of your efforts only by your death.
Albert Camus
#60. 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.
Albert Camus
#61. Therefore there is only one form of freedom for Stirner, "my power," and only
one truth, "the magnificent egotism of the stars.
Albert Camus
#62. As in all religions, man is freed of the weight of his own life.
Albert Camus
#63. 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!
Albert Camus
#64. The defects of the West are innumerable, its crimes and errors very real. But in the end, let's not forget that we are the only ones to have the possibility of improvement and emancipation that lies in free genius.
Albert Camus
#65. Charm is a way of getting the answer 'Yes' without asking a clear question.
Albert Camus
#66. Man is an idea, and a precious small
idea, once he turns his back on love. And
that's my point; we, mankind, have lost the capacity for love.
Albert Camus
#67. 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.
Albert Camus
#68. He was overcome by a violent and fraternal love for this man from whom he had felt so distant, and he realized that by killing him he had consummated a union which bound them together forever.
Albert Camus
#69. Our civilization survives in the complacency of cowardly or malignant minds
a sacrifice to the vanity of aging adolescents
Albert Camus
#70. Don't wait for the last judgment - it takes place every day.
Albert Camus
#71. Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable.
Albert Camus
#72. Only it takes time to be happy. A lot of time. Happiness, too, is a long patience. And in almost every case, we use up our lives making money, when we should be using our money to gain time.
Albert Camus
#73. They hurt each other without wanting to, just because each represented to the others the cruel and demanding necessity of their lives.
Albert Camus
#74. One realizes that he is born of this country where everything is given to be taken away.
Albert Camus
#75. The primordial sea indefatigably repeats the same words and casts up the same astonished beings on the same seashore. But at least he who consents to his own return and to the return of all things, who becomes an echo and an exalted echo, participates in the
divinity of the world.
Albert Camus
#76. The girl talks to me but I can't understand her anymore. Naturally, I say yes in my most sincere tone of voice. But I am not with it. Everything annoys me, I hesitate, I don't feel hungry.
Albert Camus
#77. But all the long speeches, all the interminable days and hours that people had spent talking about my soul, had left me with the impression of a colorless swirling river that was making me dizzy.
Albert Camus
#78. Independence is earned by a few words of cheap confidence
Albert Camus
#79. Everything I know about morality and the obligations of men, I owe it to football (soccer).
Albert Camus
#80. There are places where the mind dies so that a truth which is its very denial may be born.
Albert Camus
#81. 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.
Albert Camus
#82. I loved them, according to the hallowed expression, which amounts to saying that I never loved any of them.
Albert Camus
#83. All existence for a man turned away from the eternal is but a vast mime under the mask of the absurd. Creation is the great mime ... it is itself an absurd phenomenon.
Albert Camus
#84. The end of their passion consists of loving uselessly at the moment when it is pointless.
Albert Camus
#85. Why I'm an artist, not a philosopher? Because I think in words rather than ideas.
Albert Camus
#86. Nothing in life is worth, turning your back on, if you love it.
Albert Camus
#88. I have always thought it would be easier to redeem a man steeped in vice and crime than a greedy, narrow-minded, pitiless merchant.
Albert Camus
#89. Truth and freedom, having few lovers, are demanding mistresses.
Albert Camus
#90. 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.
Albert Camus
#92. I thought the traveler pretty much deserved what he got and that you should never play games.
Albert Camus
#93. His own faith, however, was not lacking in virtues since it consisted in acknowledging obscurely that he would be granted much without ever deserving anything.
Albert Camus
#94. Believe me, for certain men at least, not taking what one doesn't desire is the hardest thing in the world.
Albert Camus
#96. The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.
Albert Camus
#97. If there were a party of those who aren't sure they're right, I'd belong to it.
~(Camus, as quoted by Tony Judt)
Albert Camus
#98. You do not have to unburden your soul for everyone; it will be enough if you do that for those you love.
Albert Camus
#99. We live with a few familiar ideas. Two or three. We polish and transform them according to the societies and the men we happen to meet.
Albert Camus
#100. You must have a love, a great love, to ensure an alibi at unjustified despairs that conquer all of us
Albert Camus
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