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A Novel Is Never Anything But A Philosophy Expressed In Images. And In A Good Novel The Philosophy Has Disappeared Into The Images.

-Albert Camus

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A Novel Is Never

Albert Camus

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A Novel Is Never Anything But A Philosophy Expressed In Images. And In A Good Novel The Philosophy Has Disappeared Into The Images.

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Madness Such As This, Its Like Trying To Stop A Fire With The Moisture From A Kiss

Independence Is Earned By A Few Words Of Cheap Confidence

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?

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.

To Abandon Oneself To Principles Is Really To Die - And To Die For An Impossible Love Which Is The Contrary Of Love.

What Is A Rebel? A Man Who Says No: But Whose Refusal Does Not Imply A Renunciation.

It Is Natural To Give A Clear View Of The World After Accepting The Idea That It Must Be Clear.

True Artists Scorn Nothing.

There Are People Who Prefer To Look Their Fate In The Eye

Maman Used To Say That You Can Always Find Something To Be Happy About. In My Prison, When The Sky Turned Red And A New Day Slipped Into My Cell, I Found Out That She Was Right.

To Be Happy, We Must Not Be Too Concerned With Others.

There Is No More Futile Punishment Than Futile And Hopeless Labor.

The Struggle To Reach The Top Is Itself Enough To Fulfill The Heart Of Man. One Must Believe That Sisyphus Is Happy.

I Had Only A Little Time Left And I Didn't Want To Waste It On God.

Every Act Of Rebellion Expresses A Nostalgia For Innocence And An Appeal To The Essence Of Being.

The Great Courage Is To Stare As Squarely At The Light As At Death.

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.

For 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.

The Absurd Is Essentially A Divorce. It Lies In Neither Of The Elements Compared; It Is Born Of Their Confrontation.

Great Ideas, It Has Been Said, Come Into The World As Gently As Doves. Perhaps Then, If We Listen Attentively, We Shall Hear Amid The Uproar Of Empires And Nations, A Faint Flutter Of Wings, The Gentle Stirring Of Life And Hope. Some Will Say That This Hope Lies In A Nation; Others In A Man. I Believe Rather That It Is Awakened, Revived, Nourished, By Millions Of Solitary Individuals Whose And Works Every Day Negate Frontiers And The Crudest Implications Of History.

It Is Not True That The Heart Wears Out - But The Body Creates This Illusion.

That's Love, Giving Everything, Sacrificing All Without Hope Of Return.

Yes, I'm Happy, In Human Terms.

... Habit Starts At The Second Crime. At The First One, Something Is Ending.

The Absurd Is Lucid Reason Noting Its Limits.

The Truth Is That Every Intelligent Man, As You Know, Dreams Of Being A Gangster And Of Ruling Over Society By Force Alone. As It Is Not So Easy As The Detective Novels Might Lead One To Believe, One Generally Relies On Politics And Joins The Cruelest Party.what Does It Matter, After All, If By Humiliating One's Mind One Succeeds In Dominating Every One? I Discovered In Myself Sweet Dreams Of Oppression.

But Above All, In Order To Be, Never Try To Seem.

There Is No Longer A Single Idea Explaining Everything, But An Infinite Number Of Essences Giving A Meaning To An Infinite Number Of Objects. The World Comes To A Stop, But Also Lights Up.

Freedom Is The Right To Never Have To Lie.

The Contradiction Is This: Man Rejects The World As It Is, Without Accepting The Necessity Of Escaping It. In Fact, Men Cling To The World And By Far The Majority Do Not Want To Abandon It.

There May Be Responsible Persons, But There Are No Guilty Ones.

... Man Has An Idea Of A Better World Than This. But Better Does Not Mean Different, It Means Unified... Religion Or Crime, Every Human Endeavor In Fact, Finally Obeys This Unreasonabledesire And Claims To Give Life A Form It Does Not Have.

The Important Thing Isn't The Soundness Or Otherwise Of The Argument, But For It To Make You Think.

There Is A Solitude In Poverty, But A Solitude Which Restores To Each Thing Its Value.

Between History And The Eternal I Have Chosen History Because I Like Certainties. Of It, At Least, I Am Certain, And How Can I Deny This Force Crushing Me.

I Know Myself Too Well To Believe In Pure Virtue.

Only He Who Is Uncompromising As To His Rights Maintains The Sense Of Duty.

The Most Elementary Form Of Rebellion, Paradoxically , Expresses An Aspiration For Order .

Thoughts Of Suicide Have Got Me Through Many A Bad Night.

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.

Life Is Meaningless, But Worth Living, Provided You Recognize It's Meaningless.

To Know Oneself, One Should Assert Oneself.

In This Vast Country That He Had So Loved, He Was Alone.

The World In Which We Were Called To Exist Was An Absurd World, And There Was No Other In Which We Could Take Refuge.

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.

Man Is Always Prey To His Truths. Once He Has Admitted Them, He Cannot Free Himself From Them.

If Absolute Truth Belongs To Anyone In This World, It Certainly Does Not Belong To The Man Or Party That Claims To Possess It.

The Only Deep Emotion I Occasionally Felt In These Affairs Was Gratitude, When All Was Going Well And I Was Left, Not Only Peace, But Freedom To Come And Go--never Kinder And Gayer With One Woman Than When I Had Just Left Another's Bed, As If I Extended To All Others The Debt I Had Just Contracted Toward One Of Them.

The Modern Mind Is In Complete Disarray. Knowledge Has Stretched Itself To The Point Where Neither The World Nor Our Intelligence Can Find Any Foot-hold. It Is A Fact That We Are Suffering From Nihilism.

Je Puis Nier Une Chose Sans Me Croire Obligé De La Salir Ou De Retirer Aux Autres Le Droit D'y Croire.

…there's No Question Of Heroism In All This. It's A Matter Of Common Decency. That's An Idea Which May Make Some People Smile, But The Only Means Of Fighting A Plague Is - Common Decency.

I Felt As Though I Was Partly Unlearning What I Had Never Learned And Yet Knew So Well: I Mean, How To Live.

What The World Expects Of Christians Is That Christians Should Speak Out, Loud And Clear... In Such A Way That Never A Doubt, Never The Slightest Doubt, Could Rise In The Heart Of The Simplest Man.

Those Who Prefer Their Principles Over Their Happiness, They Refuse To Be Happy Outside The Conditions They Seem To Have Attached To Their Happiness.

Happiness And Love

To Correct A Natural Indifference I Was Placed Half-way Between Misery And The Sun. Misery Kept Me From Believing That All Was Well Under The Sun, And The Sun Taught Me That History Wasn't Everything.

Yes, Everything Is Simple. It's People Who Complicate Things.

Some People Talk In Their Sleep. Lecturers Talk While Other People Sleep.

Human Relationships Always Help Us To Carry On Because They Always Presuppose A Future.

I Feel More Fellowship With The Defeated Than With Saints.

Everything Is True, And Nothing Is True!

There Will Be No Lasting Peace Either In The Heart Of Individuals Or In Social Customs Until Death Is Outlawed.

Of Course, True Love Is Exceptional - Two Or Three Times A Century, More Or Less. The Rest Of The Time There Is Vanity Or Boredom.

History Only Exists, In The Final Analysis, For God.

How Many Crimes Are Permitted Simply Because Their Authors Could Not Endure Being Wrong.

Although It Was The Middle Of Winter, I Finally Realized That, Within Me, Summer Was Inextinguishable.

And I Too, Felt Ready To Start Life All Over Again. It Was As If That Great Rush Of Anger Had Washed Me Clean, Emptied Me Of Hope, And, Gazing Up At The Dark Sky Spangled With Its Signs And Stars, For The First Time, The First, I Laid My Heart Open To The Benign Indifference Of The Universe.

What Is Called A Reason For Living Is Also An Excellent Reason For Dying.

You Will Never Be Happy If You Continue To Search For What Happiness Consists Of. You Will Never Live If You Are Looking For The Meaning Of Life.

A Loveless World Is A Dead World.

Truly Fertile Music, The Only Kind That Will Move Us, That We Shall Truly Appreciate, Will Be A Music Conducive To Dream, Which Banishes All Reason And Analysis. One Must Not Wish First To Understand And Then To Feel. Art Does Not Tolerate Reason.

Everyone Would Like To Behave Like A Pagan, With Everyone Else Behaving Like A Christian.

The Work Of Art Is Born Of The Intelligence's Refusal To Reason The Concrete. It Marks The Triumph Of The Carnal.

Do Not Be Surprised. I Do Not Like Writers And I Cannot Stand Their Lies. They Speak So As Not To Listen To Themselves Speak. If They Did Listen, They Would Know That They Are Nothing And Then They Would No Longer Be Able To Speak.

“to Think The Way You Do,” He Said Smiling, “you Have To Be A Man Who Lives Either On A Tremendous Despair, Or On A Tremendous Hope.” “on Both, Perhaps.”

We Rarely Confide In Those Who Are Better Than We Are.

Yes, I Know What Passion Would Fill Me With All Its Power. Before, I Was Too Young. I Got In The Way. Now I Know That Acting And Loving And Suffering Is Living, Of Course, But It’s Only Living Insofar As You Can Be Transparent And Accept Your Fate, Like The Unique Reflection Of A Rainbow Of Joys And Passions Which Is The Same For Everyone.

Obstinacy Alone Is Not A Virtue.

... Here, Where The Gaze Is Stopped Everywhere, The Whole Earth Is Designed So That The Face Turns Upward And The Gaze Implores. Oh! I Hate This World Where We Are Reduced To God.

Maman Died Today. Or Yesterday Maybe, I Don't Know. I Got A Telegram From The Home: 'mother Deceased. Funeral Tomorrow. Faithfully Yours.' That Doesn't Mean Anything. Maybe It Was Yesterday.

Camus Himself Described This Work As 'an Attempt To Understand The Time I Live In'.

But All The Long Speeches, All The Interminable Days And Hours That People Had Spent Talking About My Soul, Had Left Me With The Impression Of A Colorless Swirling River That Was Making Me Dizzy.

Their Guilt Made Me Eloquent Because I Was Not Its Victim.

People Believe A Man Is In Distress Because His Loved One Dies In One Day. But His Real Pain Is Less Futile: It Is That He Finds Out That Sadness Too Does Not Last. Even Pain Has No Meaning.

The Greatness Of Man Lies In His Decision To Be Stronger Than His Condition.

I Want To Know If I Can Live With What I Know, And Only Than.

Great Feelings Take With Them Their Own Universe, Splendid Or Abject. They Light Up With Their Passion An Exclusive World In Which They Recognize Their Climate.

Holland Is A Dream, Monsieur, A Dream Of Gold And Smoke-smokier By Day, More Gilded By Night. And Night And Day That Dream Is Peopled With Lohengrins Like These, Dreamily Riding Their Black Bicycles With High Handle-bars, Funereal Swans Constantly Drifting Throughout The Whole Country, Around The Seas, Along The Canals.

For Rich People, The Sky Is Just An Extra, A Gift Of Nature. The Poor, On The Other Hand, Can See It As It Is, A Gift Of Infinite Grace.

I Used To Advertise My Loyalty And I Don't Believe There Is A Single Person I Loved That I Didn't Eventually Betray.

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.

I Hope The Dogs Don't Bark Tonight. I Always Think It's Mine

To Write Is To Become Disinterested. There Is A Certain Renunciation In Art.

A Stranger To Myself And To The World, Armed Solely With A Thought That Negates Itself As Soon As It Asserts, What Is This Condition In Which I Can Have Peace Only By Refusing To Know And To Live, In Which The Appetite For Conquest Bumps Into Walls That Defy Its Assaults?

To Lose The Touch Of Flowers And Women's Hands Is The Supreme Separation.

Democracy Is Not The Law Of The Majority But The Protection Of The Minority.

Finally, And Most Of All, Words Failed Him.

It Is Immoral Not To Tell.

The Absurd Is A Shadow Cast Over Everything We Do And Even If We Try To Live Life As If It Has Meaning As If There Are Reasons For Doing Things The Absurd Will Linger In The Back Of Our Minds As A Nagging Doubt That Perhaps There Is No Point.

There Is Merely Bad Luck In Not Being Loved; There Is Misfortune In Not Loving. All Of Us, Today, Are Dying Of This Misfortune. For Violence And Hatred Dry Up The Heart Itself; The Long Fight For Justice Exhausts The Love That Nevertheless Gave Birth To It.

From Paul To Stalin, The Popes Who Have Chosen Caesar Have Prepared The Way For Caesars Who Quickly Learn To Despise Popes.

I Have Always Felt I Lived On The High Seas, Threatened, At The Heart Of A Royal Happiness.

In Every Rebellion Is To Be Found The Metaphysical Demand For Unity, The Impossibility Of Capturing It, And The Construction Of A Substitute Universe.

If It Adapts Itself To What The Majority Of Our Society Wants, Art Will Be A Meaningless Recreation.

There Is The Good And The Bad, The Great And The Low, The Just And The Unjust. I Swear To You That All That Will Never Change.

Analysis Of Rebellion Leads At Least To The Suspicion That, Contrary To The Postulates Of Contemporary Thought, A Human Nature Does Exist, As The Greeks Believed. Why Rebel If There Is Nothing Permanent In Oneself Worth Preserving? ... Rebellion, Though Apparently Negative, Since It Creates Nothing, Is Profoundly Positive In That It Reveals The Part Of Man Which Must Always Be Defended.

In The Depths Of Winter, I Finally Learned That Within Me There Lay An Invincible Summer.

... We Need The Sweet Pain Of Anticipation To Tell Us We Are Really Alive.

I Conceived At Least One Great Love In My Life, Of Which I Was Always The Object.

On Certain Mornings, As We Turn A Corner, An Exquisite Dew Falls On Our Heart And Then Vanishes. But The Freshness Lingers, And This, Always, Is What The Heart Needs. The Earth Must Have Risen In Just Such A Light The Morning The World Was Born.

I Know Simply That The Sky Will Last Longer Than I.

Believe Me, The Hardest Thing For A Man To Give Up Is That Which He Really Doesn't Want, After All.

Mon Cher Ami, Let's Not Give Them Any Pretext, No Matter How Small, For Judging Us!!! Otherwise, We'll Be Left In Shreds. We Are Forced To Take The Same Precautions As The Animal Trainer. If, Before Going Into The Cage, He Has The Misfortune To Cut Himself While Shaving, What A Feast For The Wild Animals!!

And Real Nobility (that Of The Heart) Is Based On Scorn, Courage, And Profound Indifference.

It Is Normal To Give Away A Little Of One's Life In Order Not To Lose It All.

Why Should It Be Essential To Love Rarely In Order To Love Much?

The Best Are Led To Make Greater Demands Upon Themselves. As For Those Who Succumb, They Did Not Deserve To Survive.

No Excuses Ever, For Anyone; That Is My Principle At The Outset. I Deny The Good Intention, The Respectable Mistake, The Indiscretion, The Extenuating Circumstance. With Me There Is No Giving Of Absolution Or Blessing.

Poor And Free Rather Than Rich And Enslaved. Of Course, Men Want To Be Both Rich And Free, And This Is What Leads Them At Times To Be Poor And Enslaved.

All Healthy Men Have Thought Of Their Own Suicide

Truth And Freedom, Having Few Lovers, Are Demanding Mistresses.

There Is No Frontier Between Being And Appearing.

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.

The First Concern Of Any Dictatorship Is, Consequently, To Subjugate Both Labor And Culture.

The Only Way Out [of International Dictatorship] Is To Place International Law Above Governments, Which Means [...] That There Must Be A Parliament For Making It, And That Parliament Must Be Constituted By Means Of Worldwide Elections In Which All Nations Will Take Part.

The Realization That Life Is Absurd Cannot Be An End, But Only A Beginning.

To Grow Old Is To Pass From Passion To Compassion.

When You Have Once Seen The Glow Of Happiness On The Face Of A Beloved Person, You Know That A Man Can Have No Vocation But To Awaken That Light On The Faces Surrounding Him. In The Depth Of Winter, I Finally Learned That Within Me There Lay An Invincible Summer.

I Enjoyed My Own Nature To The Fullest, And We All Know There Lies Happiness, Although, To Soothe One Another Mutually, We Occasionally Pretend To Condemn Such Joys As Selfishness.

We Continue To Shape Our Personality All Our Life. If We Knew Ourselves Perfectly, We Should Die.

Nothing Is More Despicable Than Respect Based On Fear.

You Always Get Exaggerated Notions Of Things You Don't Know Anything About.

Since The Order Of The World Is Shaped By Death, Mightn't It Be Better For God If We Refuse To Believe In Him, And Struggle With All Our Might Against Death Without Raising Our Eyes Towards The Heaven Where He Sits In Silence?

The Absurd Has Meaning Only In So Far As It Is Not Agreed To.

We Have Art In Order Not To Die Of Life.

So The Thing That Bothered Me Most Was That The Condemned Man Had To Hope The Machine Would Work The First Time.

A Man Is More A Man Through The Things He Keeps To Himself Than Through Those He Says.

Still, Obviously, One Can't Be Sensible All The Time.

There Are Means That Cannot Be Excused. And I Should Like To Be Able To Love My Country And Still Love Justice. I Don't Want Just Any Greatness For It, Particularly A Greatness Born Of Blood And Falsehood. I Want To Keep It Alive By Keeping Justice Alive.

Without Work, All Life Goes Rotten. But When Work Is Soulless, Life Stifles And Dies.

To Create Is Likewise To Give A Shape To One's Fate

One Always Has Exaggerated Ideas About What One Doesn't Know.

In Short, They Were Gambling On Their Luck, And Luck Is Not To Be Coerced.

Whoever Gives Nothing, Has Nothing. The Greatest Misfortune Is Not To Be Unloved, But Not To Love.

By Giving Too Much Importance To Fine Actions One May End By Paying An Indirect But Powerful Tribute To Evil, Because In So Doing One Implies That Such Fine Actions Are Only Valuable Because They Are Rare, And That Malice Or Indifference Are Far More Common Motives In The Actions Of Men.

No Human Being, Even The Most Passionately Loved And Passionately Loving, Is Ever In Our Possession.

In That Daily Effort In Which Intelligence And Passion Mingle And Delight Each Other, The Absurd Man Discovers A Discipline That Will Make Up The Greatest Of His Strengths. The Required Diligence And Doggedness And Lucidity Thus Resemble The Conqueror's Attitude. To Create Is Likewise To Give A Shape To One's Fate. For All These Characters, Their Work Defines Them At Least As Much As It Is Defined By Them. The Actor Taught Us This: There Is No Frontier Between Being And Appearing.

Against Eternal Injustice, Man Must Assert Justice, And To Protest Against The Universe Of Grief, He Must Create Happiness.

In Order To Understand The World, One Has To Turn Away From It On Occasion.

Note, Besides, That It Is No More Immoral To Directly Rob Citizens Than To Slip Indirect Taxes Into The Price Of Goods That They Cannot Do Without.

What Must Be Remembered In Any Case Is That Secret Complicity That Joins The Logical And The Everyday To The Tragic.

Give Up The Tyranny Of Female Charm.

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.

For Centuries The Death Penalty, Often Accompanied By Barbarous Refinements, Has Been Trying To Hold Crime In Check; Yet Crime Persists. Why? Because The Instincts That Are Warring In Man Are Not, As The Law Claims, Constant Forces In A State Of Equilibrium.

Liberty Is Dangerous.

I May Not Have Been Sure About What Really Did Interest Me, But I Was Absolutely Sure About What Didn't.

These Are Facts The Heart Can Feel; Yet They Call For Careful Study Before They Become Clear To The Intellect.

I Lived With The Only Continuity, Day To Day, Of The Me-me-me.

To Insure The Adoration Of A Theorem For Any Length Of Time, Faith Is Not Enough, A Police Force Is Needed As Well.

Law Enforcement

To Live Is To Hurt Others, And Through Others, To Hurt Oneself. Cruel Earth! How Can We Manage Not To Touch Anything? To Find What Ultimate Exile?

No One Who Lives In The Sunlight Of Gratitude That Things Aren't Worse Makes A Failure Of His Or Her Life.

...the Habit Of Despair Is Worse Than Despair Itself.

There Is But One Freedom, To Put Oneself Right With Death. After That Everything Is Possible. I Cannot Force You To Believe In God. Believing In God Amounts To Coming To Terms With Death. When You Have Accepted Death, The Problem Of God Will Be Solved, And Not The Reverse.

My Great Idea Is That We Must Forgive The Pope. First Of All, He Needs It More Than Anyone Else. Besides, It Is The Only Way Of Placing Oneself Above Him.

Slave Camps Under The Flag Of Freedom, Massacres Justified By Philanthropy Or The Taste Of The Superhuman, Cripple Judgment. On The Day When Crime Puts On The Apparel Of Innocence, Through A Curious Reversal Peculiar To Our Age, It Is Innocence That Is Called On To Justify Itself. The Purpose Of This Essay Is To Accept And Study That Strange Challenge.

Men And Women Consume One Another Rapidly In What Is Called "the Act Of Love," Or Else Settle Down To A Mild Habit Of Conjugality. We Seldom Find A Mean Between These Two Extremes.

For Who Would Dare To Assert That Eternal Happiness Can Compensate For A Single Moment's Human Suffering

Eternal Happiness

Rebellion Cannot Exist Without A Strange Form Of Love.

You Will Never Be Able To Experience Everything. So, Please, Do Poetical Justice To Your Soul And Simply Experience Yourself.

Experience Yourself

Beware Of Those Who Say: "i Know This Too Well To Be Able To Express It." For If They Cannot Do So, This Is Because They Don't Know It Or Because Out Of Laziness They Stopped At The Outer Crust.

Crime Too Is A Form Of Solitude, Even If One Thousand Get Together To Commit It. And It Is Right For Me To Die Alone, After Having Lived And Killed Alone.

Thus Each Of Us Had To Be Content To Live Only For The Day, Alone Under The Vast Indifference Of The Sky.

I Have Never Been Able, Really, To Regret Anything In All My Life. I Have Always Been Far Much Too Absorbed In The Present Moment Or The Immediate Future To Think Back.

The Only Really Committed Artist Is He Who, Without Refusing To Take Part In The Combat, At Least Refuses To Join The Regular Armies And Remains A Freelance.

The Only Conception Of Freedom I Can Have Is That Of The Prisoner Or The Individual In The Midst Of The State. The Only One I Know Is Freedom Of Thought And Action.

What's Natural Is The Microbe. All The Rest-heath, Integrity, Purity (if You Like)-is A Product Of The Human Will, Of A Vigilance That Must Never Falter. The Good Man, The Man Who Infects Hardly Anyone, Is The Man Who Has The Fewest Lapses Of Attention.

In Our Society, Any Man Who Doesn't Cry At His Mother's Funeral Is Liable To Be Condemned To Death.

Capital Punishment Is The Most Premeditated Of Murders, To Which No Criminal's Deed, However Calculated Can Be Compared. For There To Be An Equivalency, The Death Penalty Would Have To Punish A Criminal Who Had Warned His Victim Of The Date At Which He Would Inflict A Horrible Death On Him And Who, From That Moment Onward, Had Confined Him At His Mercy For Months. Such A Monster Is Not Encountered In Private Life.

The Society Of Merchants Can Be Defined As A Society In Which Things Disappear In Favor Of Signs. When A Ruling Class Measures Its Fortunes, Not By The Acre Of Land Or The Ingot Of Gold, But By The Number Of Figures Corresponding Ideally To A Certain Number Of Exchange Operations, It Thereby Condemns Itself To Setting A Certain Kind Of Humbug At The Center Of Its Experience And Its Universe. A Society Founded On Signs Is, In Its Essence, An Artificial Society In Which Man's Carnal Truth Is Handled As Something Artificial.

Mistakes Are Joyful, Truth Infernal.

Conscious Of Not Being Able To Separate Myself From My Time, I Have Decided To Become Part Of It.

People Have Played On Words And Pretended To Believe That Refusing To Grant A Meaning To Life Necessarily Leads To Declaring That It Is Not Worth Living. In Truth, There Is No Necessary Common Measure Between These Two Judgments.

I Hadn't Understood How Days Could Be Both Long And Short At The Same Time: Long To Live Through, Maybe, But So Drawn Out That They Ended Up Flowing Into One Another. They Lost Their Names. Only 'yesterday' And 'tomorrow' Still Had Any Meaning For Me.

…. Query: How Contrive Not To Waste One's Time? Answer: By Being Fully Aware Of It All The While. Ways In Which This Can Be Done: By Spending One's Days On An Uneasy Chair In A Dentist's Waiting-room; By Remaining On One's Balcony All Of A Sunday Afternoon; By Listening To Lectures In A Language On Doesn't Know; By Traveling By The Longest And Least-convenient Train Routes, And Of Course Standing All The Way; By Lining Up At The Box-office Of Theaters And Then Not Buying A Seat; And So Forth.

There Is In Me An Anarchy And Frightful Disorder. Creating Makes Me Die A Thousand Deaths, Because It Means Making Order, And My Entire Being Rebels Against Order. But Without It I Would Die, Scattered To The Winds.

Ah Cher Ami, How Poor In Invention Men Are! They Are They Always Think One Commits Suicide For A Reason. But It's Quite Possible To Commit Suicide For Two Reasons. No, That Never Occurs To Them. So What's The Good Of Dying Intentionally, Of Sacrificing Yourself To The Idea You Want People To Have Of You? Once You Are Dead, They Will Take Advantage Of It To Attribute Idiotic Or Vulgar Motives To Your Action. Martyrs, Cher Ami, Must Choose Between Being Forgotten, Mocked, Or Made Use Of. As For Being Understood--never!

More And More, Revolution Has Found Itself Delivered Into The Hands Of Its Bureaucrats And Doctrinaires On The One Hand, And To The Enfeebled And Bewildered Masses On The Other.

There Is A Life And There Is A Death, And There Are Beauty And Melancholy Between.

I Leave Sisyphus At The Foot Of The Mountain. One Always Finds One's Burden Again. But Sisyphus Teaches The Higher Fidelity That Negates The Gods And Raises Rocks. He Too Concludes That All Is Well. This Universe Henceforth Without A Master Seems To Him Neither Sterile Nor Futile. Each Atom Of That Stone, Each Mineral Flake Of That Night-filled Mountain, In Itself, Forms A World. The Struggle Itself Toward The Heights Is Enough To Fill A Man's Heart. One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy.

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.

For The First Time In A Long Time I Thought About Maman. I Felt As If I Understood Why At The End Of Her Life She Had Taken A 'fiancé,' Why She Had Played At Beginning Again. Even There, In That Home Where Lives Were Fading Out, Evening Was A Kind Of Wistful Respite. So Close To Death, Maman Must Have Felt Free Then And Ready To Live It All Again. Nobody, Nobody Had The Right To Cry Over Her. And I Felt Ready To Live It All Again Too.

A Sub-clerk In The Post Office Is The Equal Of A Conqueror If Consciousness Is Common To Them. All Experiences Are Indifferent In This Regard. There Are Some That Do Either A Service Or A Disservice To Man. They Do Him A Service If He Is Conscious. Otherwise, That Has No Importance: A Man's Failures Imply Judgment, Not Of Circumstances, But Of Himself.

I Am Too Much In Love With My Lies And Hypocrisies Not To Confess Them Fervently.

You Know, [women] Do Not Really Condemn Any Weakness: Rather, They Try To Humiliate Or Disarm Our Strengths. That Is Why Women Arethe Reward, Not Of The Warrior, But Of The Criminal.

If Pimps And Thieves Everywhere Were Always Punished, Honest People Would All Believe Themselves Always To Be Innocent.

[love] Is The Type Of Disease That Spares Neither The Intelligent Nor The Idiotic.

There Is So Much Stubborn Hope In The Human Heart.

In The Next Few Years The Struggle Will Not Be Between Utopia And Reality, But Between Different Utopias, Each Trying To Impose Itself On Reality ... We Can No Longer Hope To Save Everything, But ... We Can At Least Try To Save Lives, So That Some Kind Of Future, If Perhaps Not The Ideal One, Will Remain Possible.

Beauty Is Unbearable, Drives Us To Despair, Offering Us For A Minute The Glimpse Of An Eternity That We Should Like To Stretch Out Over The Whole Of Time.

Fancy Language, Like Poplin, Too Often Conceals An Eczema.

God Is Not Necessary To Create Culpability, Or To Punish. Our Fellow Men Are Enough For That, Helped By Ourselves.

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