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Albert Camus Quotes - Page 18

All Quotes Acting Adventure Age Aging Alienation Anxiety Art Atheism Atheist Attitude Beach Beauty Belief Birth Bitterness Boredom Chaos Character Children Choices Community Compassion Confession Conformity Consciousness Country Courage Creation Creativity Crime Criticism Culture Cynicism Darkness Death Death Penalty Design Desire Destiny Dignity Discipline Divorce Doubt Drama Duty Dying Earth Effort Energy Ethics Evil Existentialism Experience Fate Fear Feelings Fighting Football Forgiveness Freedom Friends Friendship Funeral Future Generosity Genius Giving Giving Up God Goodness Gratitude Greatness Greek Guilt Happiness Happiness And Love Happy Harmony Hate Hatred Heart Heaven Heroism History Home Honesty Hope House Human Nature Humanity Hurt Idealism Ideology Imagination Independence Innocence Inspirational Inspiring Integrity Intelligence Joy Judgement Judging Judgment Justice Killing Knowledge Liberty Life Life And Death Logic Loss Love Love Life Luck Lying Meaning Of Life Memories Money Morality Morning Motivational Myth Nature Nihilism Nostalgia Office Pain Painting Passion Peace Personality Philosophy Politics Poverty Power Progress Psychology Purpose Reality Rebellion Regret Religion Responsibility Retirement Revolution Risk Running Sacrifice Selfishness Separation Shame Silence Simplicity Sin Sleep Solitude Son Sorrow Soul Spring Struggle Study Stupidity Success Suffering Summer Time Today Torture Tragedy Truth Twilight Unity Values Violence Virtue Waiting Wall War Weakness Winning Winter Wisdom Work Writing

A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.

A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.

Life, Truth, Passion

For what gives value to travel is fear. It breaks down a kind of inner structure we have. Travel robs us of such refuge. Far from our own people, our own language, stripped of all our props, deprived of our masks (one doesn't know the fare on the streetcars, or anything else), we are completely on the surface of ourselves.

Kind, Breaking Down, Mask

"Lyrical and Critical Essays".

If there is a soul, it is a mistake to believe that it is given to us fully created. It is created here, throughout a whole life. And living is nothing else but that long and painful bringing forth.

Mistake, Believe, Long

Albert Camus (1965). “Notebooks, 1942-1951”

Great novelists are philosopher novelists - that is, the contrary of thesis-writers.

Writing, Novelists, Philosopher

"Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus)". Book by Albert Camus (Chapter 1: An Absurd Reasoning), 1955.

To me, art is not a solitary delight. It is a means of stirring the greatest number of men by providing them with a privileged image of our common joys and woes.

Art, Mean, Men

Albert Camus (1958). “Speech of acceptance upon the award of the Nobel prize for literature: delivered in Stockholm on the tenth of December, nineteen hundred and fifty-seven”

Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it.

Life, No Hope, Incumbents

Men and women consume one another rapidly in what is called "the act of love," or else settle down to a mild habit of conjugality. We seldom find a mean between these two extremes.

Mean, Men, Two

Albert Camus (1962). “The Plague”

I'd have given ten conversations with Einstein for a first meeting with a pretty chorus girl.

Girl, Personality, Firsts

Albert Camus (1960). “Collected fiction”

For rich people, the sky is just an extra, a gift of nature. The poor, on the other hand, can see it as it is, a gift of infinite grace.

Hands, Sky, People

Albert Camus (1963). “Carnets: 1935-1942”

The world in which we were called to exist was an absurd world, and there was no other in which we could take refuge.

World, Absurd, Refuge

The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody.

Silence, Sound, Ears

I am too much in love with my lies and hypocrisies not to confess them fervently.

Lying, Hypocrisy, Too Much

At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman.

Life, Beauty, Lying

Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.14, Vintage

The society of merchants can be defined as a society in which things disappear in favor of signs. When a ruling class measures its fortunes, not by the acre of land or the ingot of gold, but by the number of figures corresponding ideally to a certain number of exchange operations, it thereby condemns itself to setting a certain kind of humbug at the center of its experience and its universe. A society founded on signs is, in its essence, an artificial society in which man's carnal truth is handled as something artificial.

Men, Numbers, Land

There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness.

Life, Goodness, Clear

Albert Camus (1948). “The Plague”, Vintage

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

Demand, Greater, Deserve

Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.100, Vintage

A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.

Art, Work, Simple

Albert Camus (2012). “Lyrical and Critical Essays”, p.17, Vintage

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.

Suicide, Philosophy, Philosophical

Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus) "Absurdity and Suicide" (1942)

I cling like a miser to the freedom that disappears as soon as there is an excess of things.

Excess, Disappear, Misers

Albert Camus (2012). “Lyrical and Critical Essays”, p.9, Vintage

Happiness too is inevitable.

Cynicism, Idealism, Inevitable

Thus, in a middle course between these heights and depths, they drifted through life rather than lived, the prey of aimless days and sterile memories, like wandering shadows that could have acquired substance only by consenting to root themselves in the solid earth of their distress.

Memories, Roots, Shadow

Albert Camus (1960). “The plague: translated from the French”

My life was lucky so that I met, I loved (and disappointed) only outstanding people.

People, Lucky, Mets

The Poor Man whom everyone speaks of, the Poor Man whom everyone pities, one of the repulsive Poor from whom charitable souls keep their distance, he has still said nothing. Or, rather, he has spoken through the voice of Victor Hugo, Zola, Richepin. At least, they said so. And these shameful impostures fed their authors. Cruel irony, the Poor Man tormented with hunger feeds those who plead his case.

Distance, Men, Voice

Heroism is accessible. Happiness is more difficult.

Heroism, Difficult

In the end, we would like not to be guilty while at the same time being dispensed of the effort of purifying ourselves. Not enough cynicism and not enough virtue.

Effort, Guilty, Virtue

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