Albert Camus Quotes - Page 22

• As soon as one does not kill oneself, one must keep silent about life.

  Albert Camus

  Death, Suicide, Silence

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

  5 Copy quote

• The most loathsome materialism is not the kind people usually think of, but the sort that attempts to let dead ideas pass for living realities, diverting into sterile myths the stubborn and lucid attention we give to what we have within us that must forever die.

  Albert Camus

  Reality, Thinking, Ideas

  Albert Camus (2012). “Lyrical and Critical Essays”, p.98, Vintage

  23 Copy quote

• For years I've wanted to live according to everyone else's morals. I've forced myself to live like everyone else, to look like everyone else. I said what was necessary to join together, even when I felt separate. And after all of this, catastrophe came. Now I wander amid the debris, I am lawless, torn to pieces, alone and accepting to be so, resigned to my singularity and to my infirmities. And I must rebuild a truth-after having lived all my life in a sort of lie.

  Albert Camus

  Inspirational, Lying, Years

  Albert Camus (2008). “Notebooks, 1951-1959”, Ivan R Dee

  5 Copy quote

• It happens that the stage sets collapse. Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm – this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the “why” arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.

  Albert Camus

  Friday, Monday, Sleep

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

  8 Copy quote

• Knowing what [Christ] knew , knowing all about mankind--ah! who would have thought that the crime is not so much to make others die, but to die oneself--confronted day and night with his innocent crime, it became too difficult to go on. It was better to get it over with, to not defend himself, to die, in order not to be the only one to have survived, and to go elsewhere, where, perhaps, he would be supported.

  Albert Camus

  God, Night, Order

  8 Copy quote

• There can be no question of masking the evidence, of suppressing the absurd by denying one of the terms of its equation. It is essential to know whether one can live with it or whether, on the other hand, logic commands one to die of it.

  Albert Camus

  Hands, Essentials, Logic

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.50, Vintage

  12 Copy quote

• One might think, that a period which, within fifty years, uproots, enslaves or kills seventy million human beings, should only, and forthwith, be condemned. But also its guilt must be understood.

  Albert Camus

  Thinking, Years, Guilt

  Albert Camus (1965). “Caligula and Cross purpose”

  15 Copy quote

• Europe has lived on its contradictions, flourished on its differences, and, constantly transcending itself thereby, has created a civilization on which the whole world depends even when rejecting it. This is why I do not believe in a Europe unified under the weight of an ideology or of a technocracy that overlooked these differences.

  Albert Camus

  Believe, Europe, Civilization

  Albert Camus (2012). “Resistance, Rebellion, and Death: Essays”, p.243, Vintage

  17 Copy quote

• If Nietzsche is correct, that to shame a man is to kill him, then any honest attempt at autobiography will be an act of self-destruction.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Self, Honest

  7 Copy quote

• The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.

  Albert Camus

  Fall, Punishment, Rocks

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.119, Vintage

  34 Copy quote

• We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

  Albert Camus

  Life, Personality, Shapes

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

  11 Copy quote

• I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.

  Albert Camus

  Hate, Wish, Crowds

  Albert Camus (2002). “The Stranger”, Spark Notes

  52 Copy quote

• What more ghastly image can be called up than that of a man betrayed by his body who, simply because he did not die in time, lives out the comedy while awaiting the end, face to face with that God he does not adore, serving him as he served life, kneeling before a void and arms outstretched toward a heaven without eloquence that he knows to be also without depth?

  Albert Camus

  Men, Heaven, Body

  9 Copy quote

• Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable.

  Albert Camus

  Happiness, Son, Two

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.122, Vintage

  15 Copy quote

• For there is merely bad luck in not being loved; there is misfortune in not loving.

  Albert Camus

  Love, Luck, Misfortunes

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.201, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• I would like to be able to breathe— to be able to love her by memory or fidelity. But my heart aches. I love you continuously, intensely.

  Albert Camus

  Memories, Love You, Heart

  9 Copy quote

• Have you noticed that only death arouses our emotions? How we love thee friends who have just passed away, right? How we admire those master who no longer speak, their mouths full of dirt. We them we are not obligated.

  Albert Camus

  Death, Mouths, Dirt

  4 Copy quote

• I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.

  Albert Camus

  Country, Justice, Able

  Albert Camus (2012). “Resistance, Rebellion, and Death: Essays”, p.5, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Blood, Color, Smell

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.189, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

• She was wearing a pair of my pajamas with the sleeves rolled up. When she laughed I wanted her again. A minute later she asked me if I loved her. I told her it didn't mean anything but that I didn't think so. She looked sad. But as we were fixing lunch, and for no apparent reason, she laughed in such a way that I kissed her.

  Albert Camus

  Mean, Thinking, Lunch

  5 Copy quote

• The first choice an artist makes is precisely to be an artist, and if he chooses to be an artist it is in consideration of what he is himself and because of a certain idea he has of art

  Albert Camus

  Art, Ideas, Choices

  9 Copy quote

• We must learn how to lend ourselves to dreaming when dreams lend themselves to us.

  Albert Camus

  Dream

  Albert Camus (2012). “Lyrical and Critical Essays”, p.97, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

• Every artist preserves deep within him a single source from which, throughout his lifetime, he draws what he is, and what he says. When the source dries up, the work withers and crumbles.

  Albert Camus

  Artist, Lifetime, Source

  "Pretensions: Adieu, Adieu, Albert Camus" by Joe Queenan, reason.com. March 1990.

  13 Copy quote

• But when a man has had only four hours' sleep he isn't sentimental. He sees things as they are: that is to say, he sees them in the garish light of justice; hideous, witless justice.

  Albert Camus

  Sleep, Men, Light

  ALBERT CAMUS (1971). “NOBEL PRIZE LIBRARY”

  7 Copy quote

• Old women even forget how to love their sons. The heart gets worn out, Monsieur.

  Albert Camus

  Heart, Son, How To Love

  10 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

Jean-Paul Sartre

Franz Kafka

Marguerite Duras

Friedrich Nietzsche

Simone de Beauvoir

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Marcel Proust

Soren Kierkegaard