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At The Heart Of All Beauty Lies Something Inhuman, And These Hills, The Softness Of The Sky, The Outline Of These Trees At This Very Minute Lose The Illusory Meaning With Which We Had Clothed Them, Henceforth More Remote Than A Lost Paradise . . . That Denseness And That Strangeness Of The World Is Absurd.

-Albert Camus

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At The Heart Of

Albert Camus

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At The Heart Of All Beauty Lies Something Inhuman, And These Hills, The Softness Of The Sky, The Outline Of These Trees At This Very Minute Lose The Illusory Meaning With Which We Had Clothed Them, Henceforth More Remote Than A Lost Paradise . . . That Denseness And That Strangeness Of The World Is Absurd.

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When A War Breaks Out, People Say: "it's Too Stupid; It Can't Last Long." But Though A War May Well Be "too Stupid," That Doesn't Prevent Its Lasting. Stupidity Has A Knack Of Getting Its Way; As We Should See If We Were Not Always So Much Wrapped Up In Ourselves.

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.

They Came To Know The Incorrigible Sorrow Of All Prisoners And Exiles, Which Is To Live In Company With A Memory That Serves No Purpose.

The World Is Never Quiet, Even Its Silence Eternally Resounds With The Same Notes, In Vibrations Which Escape Our Ears. As For Those That We Perceive, They Carry Sounds To Us, Occasionally A Chord, Never A Melody.

But,' I Reminded Myself, 'it's Common Knowledge That Life Isn't Worth Living, Anyhow.

Common Knowledge

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.

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

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

My Profession Lent Itself Nicely To My Vocation For Heights. It Freed Me Of Any Bitterness Towards My Fellow Men, Who Were Alwaysin My Debt, Without My Owing Them Anything. It Placed Me Above The Judge Whom, I In Turn Judged, Above The Defendant Whom I Forced Into Gratitude.

Nothing In The World Is Worth Turning One's Back On What One Loves.

Having Money Is A Way Of Being Free Of Money.

But What Are A Hundred Million Deaths? When One Has Served In A War, One Hardly Knows What A Dead Man Is, After A While. And Since A Dead Man Has No Substance Unless One Has Actually Seen Him Dead, A Hundred Million Corpses Broadcast Through History Are No More Than A Puff Of Smoke In The Imagination.

Your Success And Happiness Are Forgiven You Only If You Generously Consent To Share Them. But To Be Happy It Is Essential Not To Be Too Concerned With Others. Consequently, There Is No Escape. Happy And Judged, Or Absolved And Wretched.

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

Murder Is Terribly Exhausting.

The Absurd Depends As Much On Man As On The World. For The Moment, It Is All That Links Them Together.

There Is Always A Certain Hour Of The Day And Of The Night When A Man’s Courage Is At Its Lowest Ebb, And It Was That Hour Only That He Feared.

There Is Nothing Abstract About Pain. It Is Specific, It Is Real, And, When It Is Intense, It Is World Destroying.

Violence Is Both Unavoidable And Unjustifiable.

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

Do Not Be Afraid Of Spending Quality Time By Yourself. Find Meaning Or Don’t Find Meaning But “steal” Some Time And Give It Freely And Exclusively To Your Own Self. Opt For Privacy And Solitude. That Doesn’t Make You Antisocial Or Cause You To Reject The Rest Of The World. But You Need To Breathe. And You Need To Be.

They Knew Now That If There Is One Thing One Can Always Yearn For, And Sometimes Attain, It Is Human Love.

Most Men Are Like Me. They Cannot Live In A Universe Where The Most Bizarre Thought Can In One Second Enter Into The Realm Of Reality--where, Most Often, It Does Enter, Like A Knife In A Heart.

At 30 A Man Should Know Himself Like The Palm Of His Hand, Know The Exact Number Of His Defects And Qualities, Know How Far He Can Go, Foretell His Failures - Be What He Is. And, Above All, Accept These Things.

My Dear, In The Midst Of Hate, I Found There Was, Within Me, An Invincible Love. In The Midst Of Tears, I Found There Was, Within Me, An Invincible Smile. In The Midst Of Chaos, I Found There Was, Within Me, An Invincible Calm. I Realized, Through It All, That… In The Midst Of Winter, I Found There Was, Within Me, An Invincible Summer. And That Makes Me Happy. For It Says That No Matter How Hard The World Pushes Against Me, Within Me, There’s Something Stronger – Something Better, Pushing Right Back. Truly Yours, Albert Camus

No Code Of Ethics And No Effort Are Justifiable A Priori In The Face Of The Cruel Mathematics That Command Our Condition.

Liberty Is Dangerous.

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.

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?

In Oran, As Elsewhere, For Want Of Time And Thought, People Have To Love One Another Without Knowing It.

Give Up The Tyranny Of Female Charm.

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.

Life Is The Result Of All Your Choices.

Friendship Is Not So Simple. It Is Hard To Get And Takes A Long Time, But When One Ha It One Cannot Get Rid Of It, One Has To Face It.

The Main Thing Is That Everything Become Simple, Easy Enough For A Child To Understand.

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.

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.

This Absurd, Godless World Is, Then, Peopled With Men Who Think Clearly And Have Ceased To Hope. And I Have Not Yet Spoken Of The Most Absurd Character, Who Is The Creator.

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.

We Have Art In Order Not To Die Of Life.

What Did It Matter If He Existed For Two Or For Twenty Years? Happiness Was The Fact That He Had Existed.

If One Could Only Say Just Once: 'this Is Clear', All Would Be Saved

But The World Itself Has No Reason, And I Can Say So, I Who Have Experienced It All, From The Creation To The Destruction.

Freedom Is The Right To Never Have To Lie.

The Innocent Is The Person Who Explains Nothing

We Are All Exceptional Cases. We All Want To Appeal Against Something! Each Of Us Insists On Being Innocent At All Cost, Even If He Has To Accuse The Whole Human Race And Heaven Itself.

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.

Men Are Never Convinced Of Your Reasons, Of Your Sincerity, Of The Seriousness Of Your Sufferings, Except By Your Death. So Long As You Are Alive, Your Case Is Doubtful; You Have A Right Only To Their Skepticism.

This Very Heart Which Is Mine Will Forever Remain Indefinable To Me. Between The Certainty I Have Of My Existence And The Content I Try To Give To That Assurance, The Gap Will Never Be Filled. Forever I Shall Be A Stranger To Myself.

I Had Been Right I Was Still Right I Was Always Right. I Had Lived My Life One Way And I Could Just As Well Lived It Another. I Had Done This And I Hadn T Done That. I Hadn T Done This Thing And I Had Done Another. And So?

Integrity Needs No Rules.

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

Every Rebellion Implies Some Kind Of Unity.

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?

All Great Deeds And All Great Thoughts Have A Ridiculous Beginning.

I Realized People Would Soon Forget Me Once I Was Dead. I Couldn't Even Say That This Was Hard To Stomach; Really, There's No Idea To Which One Doesn't Get Acclimatized In Time.

After Awhile You Could Get Used To Anything.

L'absurde Est La Notion Essentielle Et La Premie' Re Ve? Rite? . The Absurd Is The Fundamental Idea And The First Truth.

Does The End Justify The Means? That Is Possible. But What Will Justify The End? To That Question, Which Historical Thought Leaves Pending, Rebellion Replies: The Means.

Great Feelings Take With Them Their Own Universe, Splendid Or Abject.

There Is But One Truly Serious Philosophical Problem And That Is Suicide. Judging Whether Life Is Or Is Not Worth Living Amounts To Answering The Fundamental Question Of Philosophy. All The Rest — Whether Or Not The World Has Three Dimensions, Whether The Mind Has Nine Or Twelve Categories — Comes Afterwards. These Are Games; One Must First Answer.

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.

We Are Not Certain, We Are Never Certain. If We Were We Could Reach Some Conclusions, And We Could, At Last, Make Others Take Us Seriously.

The Absurd Is Sin Without God.

... 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.

Marxism Is Not Scientific: At The Best, It Has Scientific Prejudices.

Real Fulfillment, For The Man Who Allows Absolutely Free Rein To His Desires, And Who Much Dominate Everything, Lies In Hatred.

Obstinacy Alone Is Not A Virtue.

A Free Press Can, Of Course, Be Good Or Bad, But, Most Certainly Without Freedom, The Press Will Never Be Anything But Bad.

The True Work Of Art Is Always On The Human Scale. It Is Essentially The One That Says, 'less.

The Purpose Of A Writer Is To Keep Civilization From Destroying Itself.

For A Man Who Loves Power, Competition From The Gods Is Annoying. I Have Done Away With That. I Have Proven To These Illusory Godsthat A Man, If He Has The Will, Can Practice, Without Any Apprenticeship, Their Ridiculous Trade.

It Is A Well-known Fact That We Always Recognize Our Homeland At The Moment We Are About To Lose It.

Healthy People Have A Natural Skill Of Avoiding Feverish Eyes.

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

It Is Not Humiliating To Be Unhappy. Physical Suffering Is Sometimes Humiliating, But The Suffering Of Being Cannot Be, It Is Life.

Happiness And Love

Your Successes And Happiness Are Forgiven You Only If You Generously Consent To Share Them.

I Always Found Misogyny Vulgar And Stupid, And I Found Almost All The Women I Have Known To Be My Betters. However, Placing Them So High, I Used Them More Often Than I Served Them. How Does One Make Sense Of This?

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.

Thus I Progressed On The Surface Of Life, In The Realm Of Words As It Were, Never In Reality. All Those Books Barely Read, Those Friends Barely Loved, Those Cities Barely Visited, Those Women Barely Possessed! I Went Through The Gestures Out Of Boredom Or Absent-mindedness. Then Came Human Beings; They Wanted To Cling, But There Was Nothing To Cling To, And That Was Unfortunate--for Them. As For Me, I Forgot. I Never Remembered Anything But Myself.

The Poor Man Whom Everyone Speaks Of, The Poor Man Whom Everyone Pities, One Of The Repulsive Poor From Whom Charitable Souls Keep Their Distance, He Has Still Said Nothing. Or, Rather, He Has Spoken Through The Voice Of Victor Hugo, Zola, Richepin. At Least, They Said So. And These Shameful Impostures Fed Their Authors. Cruel Irony, The Poor Man Tormented With Hunger Feeds Those Who Plead His Case.

The Ancients, Even Though They Believed In Destiny , Believed Primarily In Nature , In Which They Participated Wholeheartedly. To Rebel Against Nature Amounted To Rebelling Against Oneself. It Was Butting One's Head Against A Wall.

I Don't Want To Be A Genius-i Have Enough Problems Just Trying To Be A Man.

You Know, A Man Always Judges Himself By The Balance He Can Strike Between The Needs Of His Body And The Demands Of His Mind. You're Judging Yourself Now, Mersaut, And You Don't Like The Sentence.

Judging Yourself

Where There Is No Hope, We Must Invent It.

In The End, We Would Like Not To Be Guilty While At The Same Time Being Dispensed Of The Effort Of Purifying Ourselves. Not Enough Cynicism And Not Enough Virtue.

Retaliation Is Related To Nature And Instinct, Not To Law. Law, By Definition, Cannot Obey The Same Rules As Nature.

We Are Not Certain, We Are Never Certain.

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.

Greatness Consists In Trying To Be Great. There Is No Other Way.

The Only Way To Deal With An Unfree World Is To Become So Absolutely Free That Your Very Existence Is An Act Of Rebellion.

Men Who Have Greatness Within Them Don't Go In For Politics.

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.

In Every Guilty Man, There Is Some Innocence. This Makes Every Absolute Condemnation Revolting.

I Feel More Fellowship With The Defeated Than With Saints.

It Is Not The World That Is Absurd, Nor Human Thought: The Absurd Arises When The Human Need To Understand Meets The Unreasonableness Of The World, When 'my Appetite For The Absolute And For Unity' Meets 'the Impossibility Of Reducing This World To A Rational And Reasonable Principle.'

It Is Better To Burn Than To Disappear.

In Order To Exist, Man Must Rebel, But Rebellion Must Respect The Limits That It Discovers In Itself - Limits Where Minds Meet, And In Meeting, Begin To Exist.

The Real 19th Century Prophet Was Dostoevsky, Not Karl Marx.

It Is Easy To Shield The Outer Body From Poisoned Arrows, But It Is Impossible To Shield The Mind From The Poisoned Darts That Originate Within Itself. Greed, Anger, Foolishness And The Infatuations Of Egoism - These Four Poisoned Darts Originate Within The Mind And Infect It With Deadly Poison.

I Know That Man Is Capable Of Great Deeds. But If He Isn't Capable Of Great Emotion, Well, He Leaves Me Cold.

Chacun Exige D'e" Tre Innocent, A' Tout Prix, Me" Me Si, Pour Cela, Il Faut Accuser Le Genre Humain Et Le Ciel. Everyone Insists On His Or Her Innocence, At All Costs, Even If It Means Accusing The Rest Of The Human Race And Heaven.

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.

We Are Condemned To Live Together.

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

Moreover, Most People, Assuming They Had Not Altogether Abandoned Religious Observances, Or Did Not Combine Them Naively With A Thoroughly Immoral Way Of Living, Had Replace Normal Religious Practice By More Or Less Extravagant Superstitions.

The Danger Of Lectures Is That They Create The Illusion Of Teaching For Teachers, And The Illusion Of Learning For Learners.

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

There Are Plagues, And There Are Victims, And It's The Duty Of Good Men Not To Join Forces With The Plagues.

Big Tears Of Frustration And Exhaustion Were Streaming Down His Cheeks. But Because Of All The Wrinkles, They Weren't Dripping Off. They Spread Out And Ran Together Again, Leaving A Watery Film Over His Ruined Face.

Freedom Is Not Constituted Primarily Of Privileges But Of Responsibilities.

Yes, And When The Love Of Life Disappears, No Meaning Can Console Us.

Martyrs, My Friend, Have To Choose Between Being Forgotten, Mocked Or Used. As For Being Understood - Never.

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

Death Means Nothing To Men Like Me. It's The Event That Proves Them Right.

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

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.

I Have Always Thought It Would Be Easier To Redeem A Man Steeped In Vice And Crime Than A Greedy, Narrow-minded, Pitiless Merchant.

But Who Would Dare Condemn Me In This World With No Judges, Where No One Is Innocent!

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

Thinking Of The Future, Establishing Aims For Oneself, Having Preferences-all This Presupposes A Belief In Freedom, Even If One Occasionally Ascertains That One Doesn't Feel It.

[liberty] Is A Choreand A Long-distance Race, Quite Solitary, Quite Exhausting.

The Kingdom Of Heaven Will, In Fact, Appear On Earth , But It Will Be Ruled Over By Men A Mere Handful To Begin With, Who Will Be The Cassars, Because They Were The First To Understand And Later, With Time, By All Men.

The Act Of Love . . . Is A Confession. Selfishness Screams Aloud, Vanity Shows Off, Or Else True Generosity Reveals Itself.

I Have A Good, Hearty Laugh And An Energetic Handshake, And Those Are Trump Cards.

Great Novelists Are Philosopher Novelists - That Is, The Contrary Of Thesis-writers.

Happiness Too Is Inevitable.

When There Is No Hope, One Must Invent Hope.

I Do Not Want To Believe That Death Is The Gateway To Another Life. For Me, It Is A Closed Door. I Do Not Say It Is A Step We Must All Take, But That It Is A Horrible And Dirty Adventure.

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

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.

We [writers] Must Know That We Can Never Escape The Common Misery And That Our Only Justification, If Indeed There Is A Justification, Is To Speak Up, Insofar As We Can, For Those Who Cannot Do So.

The Truth Is That Nothing Is Less Sensational Than Pestilence, And By Reason Of Their Very Duration Great Misfortunes Are Monotonous.

The One Who Doesnt Play, Doesnt Win Anything, But He Actually Looses Somehting, {playing}

Am Well. Thinking Of You Always. Love

Thinking Of You

Everything Is True, And Nothing Is True!

Art And Revolt Will Die Only With The Last Man.

To Cut Short This Question Of The Law Of Retaliation, We Must Note That Even In Its Primitive Form It Can Operate Only Between Two Individuals Of Whom One Is Absolutely Innocent And The Other Absolutely Guilty. The Victim, To Be Sure, Is Innocent. But Can The Society That Is Supposed To Represent The Victim Lay Claim To Innocence?

You Have To Be Very Rich Or Very Poor To Live Without A Trade.

If God Did Not Exist, We Should Have To Invent Him. If God Did Exist, We Should Have To Abolish Him.

The Spirit Of Rebellion Can Only Exist In A Society Where A Theoretical Equality Conceals Great Factual Inequalities. The Problem Of Rebellion, Therefore, Has No Meaning Except Within Our Own Western Society.

There Is No Love Of Life Without Despair Of Life.

That Is Love, To Give Away Everything, To Sacrifice Everything, Without The Slightest Desire To Get Anything In Return.3

There Are Places Where The Mind Dies So That A Truth Which Is Its Very Denial May Be Born.

All That I Know Most Surely About Morality And Obligations I Owe To Football.

What On Earth Prompted You To Take A Hand In This?" "i Don't Know. My… My Code Of Morals, Perhaps." "your Code Of Morals. What Code, If I May Ask?" "comprehension.

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.

It Occurred To Me That Anyway One More Sunday Was Over That Maman Was Buried Now, That I Was Going Back To Work, And That, Really, Nothing Had Changed.

A True Masterpiece Does Not Tell Everything.

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

The Mistake That Men Make Is That They Do Not Believe In Theater. Otherwise, They Would Know That Every Man Is Allowed To Play Thecelestial Tragedies And To Become God. All He Has To Do Is Harden His Heart.

Ah, Mon Cher, For Anyone Who Is Alone, Without God And Without A Master, The Weight Of Days Is Dreadful.

Man Wants To Live, But It Is Useless To Hope That This Desire Will Dictate All His Actions.

And Then Came Human Beings; Humans Wanted To Cling But There Was Nothing To Cling To.

The Truth Is That Everyone Is Bored, And Devotes Himself To Cultivating Habits.

Blessed Are The Hearts That Can Bend; They Shall Never Be Broken.

May Heaven Protect Us, Cher Monsieur, From Being Set On A Pedestal By Our Friends!!!

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.

The Struggle Itself Towards The Heights Is Enough To Fill A Man's Heart. One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy.

I Do Not Have Much Liking For The Too Famous Existential Philosophy, And, To Tell The Truth, I Think Its Conclusions False.

Telling The Truth

Modern Conquerors Can Kill, But Do Not Seem To Be Able To Create. Artists Know How To Create But Cannot Really Kill. Murderers Are Only Very Exceptionally Found Among Artists.

No Longer Were There Individual Destinies; Only A Collective Destiny, Made Of Plague And Emotions Shared By All.

The Tragedy Is Not That We Are Alone, But That We Cannot Be. At Times I Would Give Anything In The World To No Longer Be Connected By Anything To This Universe Of Men.

That Must Be Wonderful; I Have No Idea Of What It Means.

For Ever, I Shall Be A Stranger To Myself.

We All Have A Weakness For Beauty.

Once In The Midst Of A Seemingly Endless Winter, I Discovered Within Myself An Invincible Spring.

But What Does It Mean, The Plague? It's Life, That's All.

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

Idleness Is Fatal Only To The Mediocre.

It's A Kind Of Spiritual Snobbery That Makes People Think They Can Be Happy Without Money.

Find Your Happiness In Yourself.

Perhaps We Cannot Prevent This World From Being A World In Which Children Are Tortured. But We Can Reduce The Number Of Tortured Children.

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.

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.

Every Writer, Big Or Small, Needs To Say Or Write That The Genius Is Always Hissed At By His Contemporaries. Naturally, This Is Not True, It Happens Only Occasionally And Often By Chance. But This Need Within The Writer Is Enlightening.

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.

If I Convince Myself That This Life Has No Other Aspect Than That Of The Absurd, If I Feel That Its Whole Equilibrium Depends On That Perpetual Opposition Between My Conscious Revolt And The Darkness In Which It Struggles, If I Admit That My Freedom Has No Meaning Except In Relation To Its Limited Fate, Then I Must Say That What Counts Is Not The Best Living But The Most Living.

But Perhaps We Should Love What We Cannot Understand

Those Who Write Clearly Have Readers.

Writers And Writing

Being Is Good, But Getting Rich Is Better.... If The Gods Had Only The Riches Of Men's Adoration, They Would Be As Poor As Poor Caligula.

Believe Me There Is No Such Thing As Great Suffering, Great Regret, Great Memory....everything Is Forgotten, Even A Great Love. That's What's Sad About Life, And Also What's Wonderful About It. There Is Only A Way Of Looking At Things, A Way That Comes To You Every Once In A While. That's Why It's Good To Have Had Love In Your Life After All, To Have Had An Unhappy Passion- It Gives You An Alibi For The Vague Despairs We All Suffer From.

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

You Make The Mistake Of Thinking You Have To Choose, That You Have To Do What You Want, That There Are Conditions For Happiness. What Matters — All That Matters, Really Is The Will To Happiness, A Kind Of Enormous, Ever Present Consciousness. The Rest - Women , Art, Success — Is Nothing But Excuses. A Canvas Waiting For Our Embroideries.

A Fate Is Not A Punishment.

If Those Whom We Begin To Love Could Know Us As We Were Before Meeting Them They Could Perceive What They Have Made Of Us.

Happiness And Love

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.

On My Way Out I Was Even Going To Shake His Hand, But I Remembered Just In Time That I'd Killed A Man.

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.

Accept Life, Take It As It Is? Stupid. The Means Of Doing Otherwise? Far From Our Having To Take It, It Is Life That Possesses Us And On Occasion Shuts Our Mouths.

By Definition, A Government Has No Conscience. Sometimes It Has A Policy, But Nothing More.

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.

A Single Sentence Will Suffice For Modern Man. He Fornicated And Read The Papers. After That Vigorous Definition, The Subject Will Be, If I May Say So, Exhausted.

We Call First Truths Those We Discover After All The Others.

Believe Me, Religions Are On The Wrong Track The Moment They Moralize And Fulminate Commandments. God Is Not Needed To Create Guilt Or To Punish. Our Fellow Men Suffice, Aided By Ourselves.

Every Minute Of Life Carries With It Its Miraculous Value, And Its Face Of Eternal Youth.

The Entire History Of Mankind Is, In Any Case, Nothing But A Prolonged Fight To The Death For The Conquest Of Universal Prestige And Absolute Power.

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.

With Rebellion, Awareness Is Born

Just As All Thought, And Primarily That Of Non-signification, Signifies Something, So There Is No Art That Has No Signification.

Meaning Of Life

Life Has No Meaning

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