Albert Camus Quotes - Page 24

• To two men living the same number of years, the world always provides the same sum of experiences. It is up to us to be conscious of them.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Years, Two

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.62, Vintage

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• For the existentials, negation is their God. To be precise, that god is maintained only through the negation of human reason. But, like suicides, gods change with men.

  Albert Camus

  Suicide, Men, Atheism

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• 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.

  Albert Camus

  Law, Yesterday, Trials

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.3, Vintage

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• Indeed, men never know how to love. nothing satisfies them. All they know is to dream, to imagine new duties, to look for new countries and new homes. While we women, we know that we must hasten to love, to share the same bed, hold hands, and fear absence. When we women love, we dream of nothing.

  Albert Camus

  Love, Dream, Country

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• To those who despair of everything reason cannot provide a faith, but only passion, and in this case it must be the same passion that lay at the root of the despair, namely humiliation and hatred.

  Albert Camus

  Passion, Roots, Hatred

  "Memorable Quotations: Philosophers of Western Civilization". Book by Carol A. Dingle, p. 40, January 1, 2000.

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• In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion; in order to serve others better, one has to hold them at a distance for a time. But where can one find the solitude necessary to vigor, the deep breath in which the mind collects itself and courage gauges its strength? There remain big cities.

  Albert Camus

  Distance, Order, Cities

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.157, Vintage

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• Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself.

  Albert Camus

  World, Reform, Tasks

  ALBERT CAMUS (1971). “NOBEL PRIZE LIBRARY”

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• As for those whose role it is to love us - I mean, relatives and in-laws (what a word)- It's a different tune. They find the right word, but it's usually the one that wounds.

  Albert Camus

  Mean, Law, Tunes

  Albert Camus (2006). “The fall”, Penguin Modern Classics

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• When one has extensively pondered about men, as a career or as a vocation, one sometimes feels nostalgic for primates. At least they do not have ulterior motives.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Careers, Sometimes

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• The reasoning is classic in its clarity. If God does not exist, Kirilov is god. If God does not exist, Kirilov must kill himself. Kirilov must therefore kill himself to become god. That logic is absurd, but it is what is needed.

  Albert Camus

  Doe, Logic, Classic

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• In the vast reaches of the dry, cold night, thousands of stars were constantly appearing, and their sparkling icicles, loosened at once, began to slip gradually toward the horizon.

  Albert Camus

  Stars, Night, Horizon

  Albert Camus (1964). “The fall, & Exile and the kingdom”, Random House Inc

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• I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L'Illustration. Something desperate, you know.

  Albert Camus

  Suicide, Illustration, Married

  Albert Camus (2012). “Happy Death”, p.36, Vintage

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• ... it is true that I do not respect [human life] more than I respect my own life. And if it is easy for me to kill, that is because it is difficult for me to die.

  Albert Camus

  Life, Death, Respect

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• They hurt each other without wanting to, just because each represented to the others the cruel and demanding necessity of their lives.

  Albert Camus

  Hurt

  Albert Camus (2013). “The First Man”, p.85, Penguin UK

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• So all a man could win in the conflict between plague and life was knowledge and memories.

  Albert Camus

  Memories, Winning, Men

  Albert Camus (1972). “The Plague”, eBookEden.com

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• Time will prolong time, and life will serve life. In this field that is both limited and bulging with possibilities, everything to himself, except his lucidity, seems unforeseeable to him. What rule, then, could emanate from that unreasonable order? The only truth that might seem instructive to him is not formal: it comes to life and unfolds in men. The absurd mind cannot so much expect ethical rules at the end of its reasoning as, rather, illustrations and the breath of human lives.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Illustration, Order

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.68, Vintage

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• stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves

  Albert Camus

  Stupidity, Knack, Way

  Albert Camus (1948). “The Plague”, Vintage

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• 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.

  Albert Camus

  Adventure, Sea, Long

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.303, Vintage

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• Every stone here sweats with suffering, I know that. I have never looked at them without a feeling of anguish. But deep in my heart I know that the most wretched among you have seen a divine face emerge from their darkness. That is the face you are asked to see.

  Albert Camus

  Heart, Sweat, Darkness

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• I spent a long time looking at faces, drinking in smiles. Am I happy or unhappy? It’s not a very important question. I live with such frenzied intensity. Things and people are waiting for me, and doubtless I am waiting for them and desiring them with all my strength and sadness. But, here, I earn the right to be alive by silence and by secrecy. The miracle of not having to talk about oneself.

  Albert Camus

  Drinking, Sadness, Long

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• 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.

  Albert Camus

  Facts, Strange, Rebellion

  "The Rebel". Book by Albert Camus, 1951.

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• Life is the result of all your choices.

  Albert Camus

  Choices, Life Is, Results

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• What did it matter if he existed for two or for twenty years? Happiness was the fact that he had existed.

  Albert Camus

  Two, Years, Matter

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• Every man needs slaves like he needs clean air. To rule is to breathe, is it not? And even the most disenfranchised get to breathe. The lowest on the social scale have their spouses or their children.

  Albert Camus

  Children, Men, Air

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• I am just coming out of five years of night, and this orgy of violent lights gives me for the first time the impression of a new continent. An enormous, 50-foot high Camel billboard : a GI with his mouth wide open blows enormous puffs of real smoke. So much bad taste hardly seems imaginable.

  Albert Camus

  New York, Real, Blow

  Albert Camus (1987). “American journals”

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