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Albert Camus Quotes - Page 23

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The absurd is essentially a divorce. It lies in neither of the elements compared; it is born of their confrontation.

The absurd is essentially a divorce. It lies in neither of the elements compared; it is born of their confrontation.

Albert Camus
Lying, Divorce, Elements
Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.30, Vintage

What I believe to be true I must therefore preserve. What seems to me so obvious, even against me, I must support.

Albert Camus
Believe, Support, Obvious
Albert Camus (1955). “The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays”

In our wildest aberrations we dream of an equilibrium we have left behind and which we naively expect to find at the end of our errors. Childish presumption which justifies the fact that child-nations, inheriting our follies, are now directing our history.

Albert Camus
Dream, Children, Errors
Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.188, Vintage

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
Rivers, Talking, Long
"The Stranger". Book by Albert Camus, 1942.

The certainty of a God giving meaning to life far surpasses in attractiveness the ability to behave badly with impunity. The choice would not be hard to make. But there is no choice and that is where the bitterness comes in. The absurd does not liberate; it binds.

Albert Camus
Giving, Choices, Bitterness
Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.67, Vintage

Men who have greatness within them don't go in for politics.

Albert Camus
Greatness, Men, Liberty
Carnets, 1935-42 (Notebooks, 1962) p. 99

Creating is living doubly. The groping, anxious quest of a Proust, his meticulous collecting of flowers, of wallpapers, and of anxieties, signifies nothing else.

Albert Camus
Flower, Creating, Anxiety
Albert Camus (1955). “The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays”

We can't do without dominating others or being served.... The essential thing, in sum, is being able to get angry without the other person being able to answer back.

Albert Camus
Power, Answers, Able

I have never been able to renounce the light, the pleasure of being, and the freedom in which I grew up.

Albert Camus
Light, Able, Pleasure
ALBERT CAMUS (1971). “NOBEL PRIZE LIBRARY”

False judges are held up in the world's admiration and I alone know the true ones.

Albert Camus
Judging, World, Admiration
Albert Camus (2012). “The Fall”, p.130, Vintage

There are crimes of passion and crimes of logic. The boundary between them is not clearly defined.

Albert Camus
Life, Passion, Logic
Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.3, Vintage

No code of ethics and no effort are justifiable a priori in the face of the cruel mathematics that command our condition.

Albert Camus
Effort, Code Of Ethics, Faces
Albert Camus (1955). “The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays”

I was always able to understand my friend who decided to quit smoking and who, through an effort of will, succeeded in doing so. One morning, he opened the newspaper, read that the first H- bomb had exploded, found out about the bomb's admirable effects and went straight to the tobacconist's.

Albert Camus
Morning, Health, Smoking

Absolute virtue is impossible and the republic of forgiveness leads, with implacable logic, to the republic of the guillotine.

Albert Camus
Forgiveness, Republic, Impossible
Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.124, Vintage

A novel is never anything but a philosophy expressed in images. And in a good novel the philosophy has disappeared into the images.

Albert Camus
Philosophy, Novel
Albert Camus (2012). “Lyrical and Critical Essays”, p.199, Vintage

But - I cannot make a choice. I have my own sorrow, but I suffer with him, too; I share his pain. I understand all - that is my trouble.

Albert Camus
Pain, Choices, Suffering
Albert Camus (2012). “Caligula and Three Other Plays”, p.56, Vintage

A profound thought is in a constant state of becoming; it adopts the experience of a life and assumes its shape.

Albert Camus
Profound, Shapes, Becoming
Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.114, Vintage

There is always a certain hour of the day and of the night when a man’s courage is at its lowest ebb, and it was that hour only that he feared.

Albert Camus
Night, Men, Hours
Albert Camus (1972). “The Plague”, eBookEden.com

Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky.

Albert Camus
Believe, Blue, Sky
Albert Camus (1960). “The plague: translated from the French”

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.

Albert Camus
Men, Years, Two
Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.62, Vintage

To those who despair of everything reason cannot provide a faith, but only passion, and in this case it must be the same passion that lay at the root of the despair, namely humiliation and hatred.

Albert Camus
Passion, Roots, Hatred
"Memorable Quotations: Philosophers of Western Civilization". Book by Carol A. Dingle, p. 40, January 1, 2000.

Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself.

Albert Camus
World, Reform, Tasks
ALBERT CAMUS (1971). “NOBEL PRIZE LIBRARY”

Once crime was as solitary as a cry of protest; now it is as universal as science. Yesterday it was put on trial; today it determines the law.

Albert Camus
Law, Yesterday, Trials
Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.3, Vintage

For the existentials, negation is their God. To be precise, that god is maintained only through the negation of human reason. But, like suicides, gods change with men.

Albert Camus
Suicide, Men, Atheism

The reasoning is classic in its clarity. If God does not exist, Kirilov is god. If God does not exist, Kirilov must kill himself. Kirilov must therefore kill himself to become god. That logic is absurd, but it is what is needed.

Albert Camus
Doe, Logic, Classic

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