Albert Camus Quotes About Desire

• Believe me, for certain men at least, not taking what one doesn't desire is the hardest thing in the world.

  Albert Camus

  Believe, Men, Desire

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Fall”, p.63, Vintage

• I can negate everything of that part of me that lives on vague nostalgias, except this desire for unity, this longing to solve, this need for clarity and cohesion. I can refute everything in this world surrounding me that offends or enraptures me, except this chaos, this sovereign chance and this divine equivalence which springs from anarchy. I don't know whether this world has meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms.

  Albert Camus

  Spring, Mean, Unity

  Albert Camus (1955). “The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays”

• That is love, to give away everything, to sacrifice everything, without the slightest desire to get anything in return.3

  Albert Camus

  Love, Sacrifice, Giving

• I was tormented by my desire for a woman ... I thought so much about a woman, about women, about all the ones I had known, about all the circumstances in which I had enjoyed them, that my cell would be filled with their faces and crowded with my desires.

  Albert Camus

  Cells, Desire, Would Be

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Stranger”, p.77, Vintage

• If only nature is real and if, in nature, only desire and destruction are legitimate, then, in that all humanity does not suffice to assuage the thirst for blood, the path of destruction must lead to universal annihilation.

  Albert Camus

  Nature, Real, Blood

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.44, Vintage

• What gives value to travel is fear. It is a fact that, at a certain moment, when we are so far from our own country, we are seized by a vague fear and an instinctive desire to go back to the protection of old habits. I look upon it more as an occasion for testing.

  Albert Camus

  Country, Travel, Old Habits

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

• Happiness implied a choice, and within that choice a concerted will, a lucid desire.

  Albert Camus

  Happiness, Choices, Desire

  Albert Camus (2012). “Happy Death”, p.118, Vintage

• Man wants to live, but it is useless to hope that this desire will dictate all his actions.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Desire, Useless

• He was conscious of the disastrous fact that love and desire must be expressed in the same way.

  Albert Camus

  Desire, Way, Facts

  Albert Camus (2012). “Happy Death”, p.25, Vintage

• But in order to speak about all and to all, one has to speak of what all know and of the reality common to us all. The seas, rains, necessity, desire, the struggle against death--these are things that unite us all. We resemble one another in what we see together, in what we suffer together. Dreams change from individual, but the reality of the world is common to us all. Striving towards realism is therefore legitimate, for it is basically related to the artistic adventure.

  Albert Camus

  Dream, Rain, Struggle

• I felt as I hadn't felt for ages. I had a foolish desire to burst into tears. for the first time I'd realized how all these people loathed me.

  Albert Camus

  People, Tears, Age

  Albert Camus (1960). “Collected fiction”

• 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.

  Albert Camus

  Love, Desire, Possession

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.261, Vintage

• The mind's deepest desire, even in its most elaborate operations, parallels man's unconscious feeling in the face of his universe: it is an insistence upon familiarity, an appetite for clarity.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Feelings, Mind

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.17, Vintage

• Real fulfillment, for the man who allows absolutely free rein to his desires, and who much dominate everything, lies in hatred.

  Albert Camus

  Real, Lying, Men

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.39, Vintage

• What is human in me is not what is best in me. What is human in me is that I desire, and to obtain what I desire, I believe I would crush anything that stood in my way.

  Albert Camus

  Crush, Believe, Desire

• Nihilism is not only despair and negation, but above all the desire to despair and to negate.

  Albert Camus

  Despair, Nihilism, Desire

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.57, Vintage

• In order to speak about all and to all, one has to speak of what all know and of the reality common to us all. The sea, rains, necessity, desire, the struggle against death... these are things that unite us all.

  Albert Camus

  Rain, Struggle, Reality

  Albert Camus (2012). “Resistance, Rebellion, and Death: Essays”, p.258, Vintage

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