Albert Camus Quotes

“In the light, the earth remains our first and our last love. Our brothers are breathing under the same sky as we; justice is a living thing. Now is born that strange joy which helps one live and die, and which we shall never again postpone to a later time.”

“Metaphysical rebellion is a claim, motivated by the concept of a complete unity, against the suffering of life and death and a protest against the human condition both for its incompleteness, thanks to death, and its wastefulness, thanks to evil.”

“If absolute truth belongs to anyone in this world, it certainly does not belong to the man or party that claims to possess it.”

“The desire for possession is insatiable, to such a point that it can survive even love itself. To love, therefore, is to sterilize the person one loves.”

“... there are two types of happiness and I have chosen that of the murderers. For I am happy. There was a time when I thought I had reached the limit of distress. Beyond that limit, there is a sterile and magnificent happiness.”

“No cause justifies the deaths of innocent people.”

“Many fledgling moralists in those days were going about our town proclaiming there was nothing to be done about it and we should bow to the inevitable. And Tarrou, Rieux, and their friends might give one answer or another, but its conclusion was always the same, their certitude that a fight must be put up, in this way or that, and there must be no bowing down... There was nothing admirable about this attitude; it was merely logical.”

“Tout re volutionnaire finit en oppresseur ou en he re tique. Every revolutionary ends as an oppressor or a heretic.”

“...the habit of despair is worse than despair itself.”

“It occurred to me that anyway one more Sunday was over that Maman was buried now, that I was going back to work, and that, really, nothing had changed.”

“Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.”

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

“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.”

“Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter.”

“How do you put everyone in the pool, so you have the right to dry yourself in the sun?”

“How can sincerity be a condition of friendship? A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.”

“Great feelings take with them their own universe, splendid or abject.”

“Fancy language, like poplin, too often conceals an eczema.”

“What is a rebel? A man who says no.”

“The true work of art is always on the human scale. It is essentially the one that says, 'less.”

“Finally, and most of all, words failed him.”

“Having money is a way of being free of money.”

“Big tears of frustration and exhaustion were streaming down his cheeks. But because of all the wrinkles, they weren't dripping off. They spread out and ran together again, leaving a watery film over his ruined face.”

“Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself. We continue to shape our personality all our life. To know oneself, one should assert oneself.”

“When I was young, I expected from people more than they could give: neverending friendship and constant excitement. Now I expect less than they can actually can give: to stay close silently. And their feelings, friendship, noble deeds always seem like a miracle to me: a true grace.”