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Albert Camus
190 quotes
“Don't let them tell us stories. Don't let them say of the man sentenced to death "He is going to pay his debt to society," but: "They are going to cut off his head." It looks like nothing. But it does make a little difference. And then there are people who prefer to look their fate in the eye.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Entre oui et non" in L'Envers et l'endroit (1937), translated as "Between Yes and No", in World Review magazine (March 1950), also quoted in The Artist and Political Vision (1982) by Benjamin R. Barber and Michael J. Ga…
“Nous nous trompons toujours deux fois sur ceux que nous aimons: d'abord à leur avantage, puis à leur désavantage.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Happy Death (written 1938), first published as La mort heureuse (1971), as translated by Richard Howard (1972)
“A novel is never anything but a philosophy put into images. And in a good novel, the whole of the philosophy has passed into the images. But if once the philosophy overflows the characters and action, and therefore looks like a label stuck on the work, the plot loses its authenticity and the novel its life. Nevertheless, a work that is to last cannot dispense with profound ideas. And this secret fusion between experiences and ideas, between life and reflection on the meaning of life, is what makes the great novelist.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre, published in the newspaper Alger Républicain (20 October 1938), p. 5; reprinted in Selected Essays and Notebooks, translated and edited by Philip Thody
“Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children. And if you don't help us, who else in the world can help us do this?”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) first seen 1948 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Said at the Dominican Monastery of Latour-Maubourg (1948); reported in Resistance, Rebellion and Death (translation by Justin O'Brien, 1961), p. 73
“We have exiled beauty; the Greeks took up arms for her.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) first seen 1948 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Helen's Exile" (1948)
“We turn our backs on nature; we are ashamed of beauty. Our wretched tragedies have a smell of the office clinging to them, and the blood that trickles from them is the color of printer's ink.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) first seen 1948 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Helen's Exile" (1948)
“Man cannot do without beauty, and this is what our era pretends to want to disregard. It steels itself to attain the absolute and authority; it wants to transfigure the world before having exhausted it, to set it to rights before having understood it. Whatever it may say, our era is deserting this world.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) first seen 1948 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Helen's Exile" (1948)
“Toute idée fausse finit dans le sang, mais il s'agit toujours du sang des autres. C'est ce qui explique que certains de nos philosophes se sentent à l'aise pour dire n'importe quoi.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) first seen 1950 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Actuelles I, 1950
“Simone Weil, je le sais encore maintenant, est le seul grand esprit de notre temps et je souhaite que ceux qui le reconnaissent en reçoivent assez de modestie pour ne pas essayer d'annexer ce témoignage bouleversant. Pour moi, je serais comblé si l'on pouvait dire qu'à ma place, et avec les faibles moyens dont je dispose, j'ai servi à faire connaître et à répandre son oeuvre dont on n'a pas encore mesuré tout le retentissement.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A letter to Weil's mother in 1951
“One does not decide the truth of a thought according to whether it is right-wing or left-wing.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) first seen 1952 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Jean-Paul Sartre, 30 June 1952.
“O light! This is the cry of all the characters of ancient drama brought face to face with their fate. This last resort was ours, too, and I knew it now. In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Return to Tipasa (1954)
“With rebellion, awareness is born.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Estranged God : Modern Man's Search for Belief (1966) by Anthony T. Padovano, p. 109
“A living man can be enslaved and reduced to the historic condition of an object. But if he dies in refusing to be enslaved, he reaffirms the existence of another kind of human nature which refuses to be classified as an object.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in Existentialism Versus Marxism : Conflicting Views on Humanism (1966, New York, Dell Pub. Co., p.234, available on archive.org), an essay edited by George Edward Novack; this essay includes a collection of text…
“There is not love of life without despair about life.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface, Lyrical and Critical Essays (1970)
“Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end. It arouses a revolt that can become fruitful.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Three Interviews" in Lyrical and Critical Essays (1970)
“Knowing that certain nights whose sweetness lingers will keep returning to the earth and sea after we are gone, yes, this helps us to die.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Sea Close By" in Lyrical and Critical Essays (1970)
“Life continues, and some mornings, weary of the noise, discouraged by the prospect of the interminable work to keep after, sickened also by the madness of the world that leaps at you from the newspaper, finally convinced that I will not be equal to it and that I will disappoint everyone—all I want to do is sit down and wait for evening. This is what I feel like, and sometimes I yield to it.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to P.B." in Lyrical and Critical Essays (1970)
“Autumn is a second Spring when every leaf is a flower.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Visions from Earth (2004) by James R. Miller, p. 126
“Ce que, finalement, je sais de plus sûr sur la morale et les obligations des hommes, c'est au football que je le dois.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) first seen 1578 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted by Jean Noury (November 10, 1965); published in: Archives du Sénat français, Comptes rendus des débats, Volume 4, 1965, p. 1578 (PDF page 28)
“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 (1913–1960) first seen 1955 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Summer in Algiers", The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (1955)
“The direction of the world overwhelms me at this time. In the long run, all the continents (yellow, black and brown) will spill over onto Old Europe. They are hundreds and hundreds of millions. They are hungry and they are not afraid to die. We no longer know how to die or how to kill. We could preach, but Europe believes in nothing. So, we must wait for the year 1000 or a miracle. For my part, I find it harder and harder to live before a wall.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Correspondance: 1932-1960, p.220, Gallimard, 1981.Letter to Jean Granier, 1957
“Seulement, il faut du temps pour être heureux. Beaucoup de temps. Le bonheur lui aussi est une longue patience.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Avoir de l'argent c'est se libérer de l'argent.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's better to bet on this life than on the next.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It takes time to live. Like any work of art, life needs to be thought about.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To have time was at once the most magnificent and the most dangerous of experiments. Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Believe me, there is no such thing as great suffering, great regret, great memory...Everything is forgotten, even great love.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He marveled at the strange blindness by which men, though they are so alert to what changes in themselves, impose on their friends an image chosen for them once and for all. He was being judged by what he had been. Just as dogs don't change character, men are dogs to one another.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Happiness implied a choice, and within that choice a concerted will, a lucid desire.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The opposite of an idealist is too often a man without love.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fate is not in man but around him.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Idleness is only fatal to the mediocre.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He discovered the cruel paradox by which we always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love — first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He realized now that to be afraid of this death he was staring at with animal terror meant to be afraid of life. Fear of dying justified a limitless attachment to what is alive in man. And all those who had not made the gestures necessary to live their lives, all those who feared and exalted impotence — they were afraid of death because of the sanction it gave to a life in which they had not been involved. They had not lived enough, never having lived at all.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Aujourd'hui maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I hope the dogs don't bark tonight. I always think it's mine.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn't mine anymore, but one in which I'd found the simplest and most lasting joys.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Of course, I had to own that he was right; I didn't feel much regret for what I'd done. Still, to my mind, he overdid it, and I'd have liked to have a chance of explaining to him, in a quite friendly, almost affectionate way, that I have never been able to really regret anything in all my life. I've always been far too much absorbed in the present moment, or the immediate future, to think back.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The papers were always talking about the debt owed to society. According to them, it had to be paid. But that doesn't speak to the imagination. What really counted was the possibility of escape, a leap to freedom, out of the implacable ritual, a wild run for it that would give whatever chance for hope there was. Of course, hope meant being cut down on some street corner, as you ran like mad, by a random bullet. But when I really thought it through, nothing was going to allow me such a luxury. Everything was against it; I would just be caught up in the machinery again.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[I]l me restait peu de temps. Je ne voulais pas le perdre avec Dieu.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Maman used to say that you can always find something to be happy about.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Those who need myths are indeed poor. Here the gods serve as beds or resting places as the day races across the sky.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nothing is harder to understand than a symbolic work. A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What must be remembered in any case is that secret complicity that joins the logical and the everyday to the tragic.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“With the exception of professional rationalists, today people despair of true knowledge. If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be history of its successive regrets and impotences.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What, then, is that incalculable feeling that deprives the mind of the sleep necessary to life? A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source