Albert Camus Quotes

“The rebel can never find peace. He knows what is good and, despite himself, does evil. The value which supports him is never given to him once and for all - he must fight to uphold it, unceasingly.”

“Men are convinced of your arguments, your sincerity, and the seriousness of your efforts only by your death.”

“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.”

“I had been right I was still right I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well lived it another. I had done this and I hadn t done that. I hadn t done this thing and I had done another. And so?”

“It's not the struggle that makes us artists, but Art that makes us struggle.”

“I always found misogyny vulgar and stupid, and I found almost all the women I have known to be my betters. However, placing them so high, I used them more often than I served them. How does one make sense of this?”

“Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death. So long as you are alive, your case is doubtful; you have a right only to their skepticism.”

“The words that reverberate for us at the confines of this long adventure of rebellion are not formulas for optimism, for which we have no possible use in the extremities of our unhappiness, but words of courage and intelligence which, on the shores of the eternal seas, even have the qualities of virtue.”

“Great ideas come into the world as gently as doves.”

“In the past, the poverty they shared had a certain sweetness about it. When the end of the day came and they would eat their dinner in silence with the oil lamp between them, there was a secret joy in such simplicity, such retrenchment.”

“Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.”

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

“We have art in order not to die of life.”

“Forever I shall be a stranger to myself. In psychology as in logic, there are truths but no truth.”

“Their guilt made me eloquent because I was not its victim.”

“Then we understand that rebellion cannot exist without a strange form of love. Those who find no rest in God or in history are condemned to live for those who, like themselves, cannot live; in fact, for the humiliated.”

“I would rather not have upset him, but I couldn't see any reason to change my life. Looking back on it, I wasn't unhappy. When I was a student, I had lots of ambitions like that. But when I had to give up my studies I learned very quickly that none of it really mattered.”

“For who would dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for a single moment's human suffering”

“Healthy people have a natural skill of avoiding feverish eyes.”

“Some other memories of the funeral have stuck in my mind. The old boy’s face, for instance, when he caught up with us for the last time, just outside the village. His eyes were streaming with tears, of exhaustion or distress, or both together. But because of the wrinkles they couldn’t flow down. They spread out, crisscrossed, and formed a smooth gloss on the old, worn face.”

“That's love, giving everything, sacrificing all without hope of return.”

“In fact, it comes to this: nobody is capable of really thinking about anyone, even in the worst calamity. For really to think about someone means thinking about that person every minute of the day, without letting one’s thoughts be diverted by anything- by meals, by a fly that settles on one’s cheek, by household duties, or by a sudden itch somewhere. But there are always flies and itches. That’s why life is difficult to live.”

“Germany collapsed as a result of having engaged in a struggle for empire with the concepts of provincial politics.”

“Violence is both unavoidable and unjustifiable.”

“Life is meaningless, but worth living, provided you recognize it's meaningless.”