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But Do You Know Why We Are Always More Just And Generous Toward The Dead? The Reason Is Simple. With Them There Is No Obligation. They Leave Us Free And We Can Take Our Time, Fit The Testimonial Between A Cocktail Party And A Nice Little Mistress, In Our Spare Time, In Short.

-Albert Camus

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But Do You Know

Albert Camus

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But Do You Know Why We Are Always More Just And Generous Toward The Dead? The Reason Is Simple. With Them There Is No Obligation. They Leave Us Free And We Can Take Our Time, Fit The Testimonial Between A Cocktail Party And A Nice Little Mistress, In Our Spare Time, In Short.

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After A Short Silence The Doctor Raised Himself A Little In His Chair And Asked If Tarrou Had An Idea Of The Path To Follow For Attaining Peace. "yes, He Replied. "the Path Of Sympathy.

The Act Of Love Is A Confession.

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.

The Workman Of Today Works Every Day In His Life At The Same Tasks, And This Fate Is No Less Absurd. But It Is Tragic Only At The Rare Moments When It Becomes Conscious.

Do You Believe In God, Doctor?" No - But What Does That Really Mean? I'm Fumbling In The Dark, Struggling To Make Something Out. But I've Long Ceased Finding That Original.

All That Remains Is A Fate Whose Outcome Alone Is Fatal. Outside Of That Single Fatality Of Death, Everything, Joy Or Happiness, Is Liberty. A World Remains Of Which Man Is The Sole Master. What Bound Him Was The Illusion Of Another World.

Integrity Has No Need Of Rules.

One Recognizes One's Course By Discovering The Paths That Stray From It.

And Indeed It Could Be Said That Once The Faintest Stirring Of Hope Became Possible, The Dominion Of Plague Was Ended.

I Knew A Pure Heart Who Refused Tot Be Mistrustful.... He Had Written At His Doorstep: "from Wherever You Are, Enter And Be Welcome". Who Do You Think Responded To This Lovely Invitation? The Militia, Who Made Themselves At Home And Gutted Him.

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.'

To Govern Means To Pillage, As Everyone Knows.

I Do Not Want To Found Anything On The Incomprehensible. I Want To Know Whether I Can Live With What I Know And With That Alone.

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.

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.

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.

Our Reason Has Driven All Away. Alone At Last, We End Up Ruling Over A Desert.

No Ends, Simply Means.

They Hurt Each Other Without Wanting To, Just Because Each Represented To The Others The Cruel And Demanding Necessity Of Their Lives.

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

He's Incapable Of Suffering For A Long Time, Or Being Happy For A Long Time. Which Means That He's Incapable Of Anything Really Worth While.

This Is The Century Of Fear.

I Have No Friends, I Only Have Accomplices Now. On The Other Hand, My Accomplices Are More Numerous Than My Friends: They Are The Human Race.

I Have Not Stopped Loving That Which Is Sacred In This World.

Happiness And Love

Rebellion Cannot Exist Without The Feeling That Somewhere, In Some Way, You Are Justified.

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.

What Really Counted Was The Possibility Of Escape, A Leap To Freedom, Out Of The Implacable Ritual, A Wild Run For It That Would Give Whatever Chance For Hope There Was. Of Course, Hope Meant Being Cut Down On Some Street Corner, As You Ran Like Mad, By A Random Bullet. But When I Really Thought It Through, Nothing Was Going To Allow Me Such A Luxury. Everything Was Against It; I Would Just Be Caught Up In The Machinery Again.

Having Money Is A Way Of Being Free Of Money.

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

I Know Of Only One Duty, And That Is To Love.

Thus, I Always Began By Assuming The Worst; My Appeal Was Dismissed. That Meant, Of Course, I Was To Die. Sooner Than Others, Obviously. 'but,' I Reminded Myself, 'it's Common Knowledge That Life Isn't Worth Living, Anyhow.' And, On A Wide View, I Could See That It Makes Little Difference Whether One Dies At The Age Of Thirty Or Threescore And Ten-- Since, In Either Case, Other Men Will Continue Living, The World Will Go On As Before. Also, Whether I Died Now Or Forty Years Hence, This Business Of Dying Had To Be Got Through, Inevitably.

We Spend Our Days In Deliberating, And We End Them Without Coming To Any Resolve.

I Longed To Be Forgotten In Order To Be Able To Complain To Myself.

We Do Not Know How To Eliminate Evil, But We Do Know How To Feed Some Of The Hungry And Heal Some Of The Infirmed.

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

Experience Yourself

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

He Who Despairs Of The Human Condition Is A Coward, But He Who Has Hope For It Is A Fool.

Freedom Is Not A Reward Or A Decoration That Is Celebrated With Champagne...oh No! It's A...long Distance Race, Quite Solitary And Very Exhausting.

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.

Violence Is Both Unavoidable And Unjustifiable.

Yes, I'm Happy, In Human Terms.

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

But In The End One Needs More Courage To Live Than To Kill Himself.

Men Cry Because Things Are Not What They Ought To Be.

We're All Special Cases.

The Best Revenge You Can Have On Intellectuals Is To Be Madly Happy.

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

We Are Not Certain, We Are Never Certain.

Healthy People Have A Natural Skill Of Avoiding Feverish Eyes.

Likewise And During Every Day Of An Unillustrious Life, Time Carries Us. But A Moment Always Comes When We Have To Carry It.

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?

It Would Be Unjust, And Moreover Utopian, For Shakespeare To Direct The Shoemakers' Union. But It Would Be Equally Disastrous Forthe Shoemakers' Union To Ignore Shakespeare.

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

Where Would His Torture Be, Indeed, If At Every Step The Hope Of Succeeding Upheld Him?

But Again And Again There Comes A Time In History When The Man Who Dares To Say That Two And Two Make Four Is Punished With Death. The Schoolteacher Is Well Aware Of This. And The Question Is Not One Of Knowing What Punishment Or Reward Attends The Making Of This Calculation. The Question Is One Of Knowing Whether Two And Two Do Make Four

A Sub-clerk In The Post-office Is The Equal Of A Conqueror If Consciousness Is Common To Them.

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

There Is But One Truly Serious Philosophical Problem And That Is Suicide.

Seeking What Is True Is Not Seeking What Is Desirable.

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.

At That Time, I Often Thought That If I Had Had To Live In The Trunk Of A Dead Tree, With Nothing To Do But Look Up At The Sky Flowing Overhead, Little By Little I Would Have Gotten Used To It.

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

I Was Born Poor And Without Religion, Under A Happy Sky, Feeling Harmony, Not Hostility, In Nature. I Began Not By Feeling Torn, But In Plenitude.

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

We Always Deceive Ourselves Twice About The People We Love - First To Their Advantage, Then To Their Disadvantage.

We Can't Do Without Dominating Others Or Being Served.... The Essential Thing, In Sum, Is Being Able To Get Angry Without The Other Person Being Able To Answer Back.

You Will Always Win If You Make An Effort, No Matter How Much. However, If You Failed It Means You Were Too Lazy.

Mother Died Today. Or Maybe Yesterday; I Can't Be Sure.

From The Evening Breeze To This Hand On My Shoulder, Everything Has Its Truth.

Alas, After A Certain Age Every Man Is Responsible For His Face.

A Fate Is Not A Punishment.

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

As A Remedy To Life In Society I Would Suggest The Big City. Nowadays, It Is The Only Desert Within Our Means.

Revolution, In Order To Be Creative, Cannot Do Without Either A Moral Or Metaphysical Rule To Balance The Insanity Of History.

Life Is A Story And God Is Author.life Is Absurd.i Think So.

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

Without Culture, And The Relative Freedom It Implies, Society, Even When Perfect, Is But A Jungle. This Is Why Any Authentic Creation Is A Gift To The Future.

Art And Culture

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

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

After All Manner Of Professors Have Done Their Best For Us, The Place We Are To Get Knowledge Is In Books. The True University Of These Days Is A Collection Of Books.

A True Masterpiece Does Not Tell Everything.

One Dies If Necessary, One Breaks Rather Than Bending. But I Bend, Because I Continue To Love Myself.

In Art, Rebellion Is Consummated And Perpetuated In The Act Of Real Creation, Not In Criticism Or Commentary.

The Only Serious Question In Life Is Whether To Kill Yourself Or Not.

Murder Is Terribly Exhausting.

...we Rarely Confide In Those Who Are Better Than We. Rather, We Are More Inclined To Flee Their Society. Most Often, On The Other Hand, We Confess To Those Who Are Like Us And Who Share Our Weaknesses. Hence We Don't Want To Improve Ourselves And Be Bettered, For We Should First Have To Be Judged In Default. We Merely Wish To Be Pitied And Encouraged In The Course We Have Chosen. In Short, We Should Like, At The Same Time, To Cease Being Guilty And Yet Not To Make The Effort Of Cleansing Ourselves.

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

What’s True Of All The Evils In The World Is True Of Plague As Well. It Helps Men To Rise Above Themselves.

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

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.

... 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.

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.

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.

An Achievement Is A Bondage. It Obliges One To A Higher Achievement.

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

To Know Oneself, One Should Assert Oneself.

There Is Only One Class Of Men, The Privileged Class

It's Not Your Pictures I Like; It's Your Painting.

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

[many Artists], Even The Greatest Ones, Are Not Sure Of Their Own Existence. So They Search For Proof, They Judge, They Condemn. It Strengthens Them, It Is The Beginnings Of Existence. They Are Alone!

I Was Comfortable In All, I Admit, But At The Same Time, Nothing Satisfied Me. Each Joy Made Me Seek Another.

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

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.

The Current Motto For All Of Us Can Only Be This: Without Giving Up Anything On The Plane Of Justice, Yield Nothing On The Plane Of Freedom.

Without Freedom, No Art; Art Lives Only On The Restraints It Imposes On Itself, And Dies Of All Others.

All I Know Of Morality I Learned From Football

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

A Profound Thought Is In A Constant State Of Becoming; It Adopts The Experience Of A Life And Assumes Its Shape.

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.

O Light! This The Cry Of All The Characters Of Ancient Drama Brought Face To Face With Their Fate. This Last Resort Was Ours, Too, And I Knew It Now. In The Middle Of Winter I At Last Discovered That There Was In Me An Invincible Summer.

A Liking For Truth At Any Cost Is A Passion That Spares Nothing And That Nothing Resists. It's A Vice, At Times A Comfort, Or A Selfishness.

If Man Is Reduced To Being Nothing But A Character In History, He Has No Other Choice But To Subside Into The Sound And Fury Of Acompletely Irrational History Or To Endow History With The Form Of Human Reason.

Always Go Too Far, Because That's Where You'll Find The Truth

Some Cry: 'love Me!!' Others: 'don't Love Me!!' But A Certain Genus, The Worst And Most Unhappy, Cries: 'don't Love Me And Be Faithful To Me!!'

Thus, In A Middle Course Between These Heights And Depths, They Drifted Through Life Rather Than Lived, The Prey Of Aimless Days And Sterile Memories, Like Wandering Shadows That Could Have Acquired Substance Only By Consenting To Root Themselves In The Solid Earth Of Their Distress.

I Had The Whole Sky In My Eyes And It Was Blue And Gold.

Happiness Is Generous. It Does Not Subsist On Destruction.

I've Never Really Had Much Of An Imagination. But Still I Would Try To Picture The Exact Moment When The Beating Of My Heart Would No Longer Be Going On Inside My Head.

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.

... 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.

Idleness Is Fatal Only To The Mediocre.

The Harshest Winter Finds An Invincible Summer In Us.

Invincible Summer

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

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

I Explained To Him, However, That My Nature Was Such That My Physical Needs Often Got In The Way Of My Feelings.

Every Revolutionary Ends Up Either By Becoming An Oppressor Or A Heretic.

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

The Most Important Thing You Do Everyday You Live Is Deciding Not To Kill Yourself.

The World I Live In Is Loathsome To Me, But I Feel One With The Men Who Suffer In It

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

In The World There Is, Parallel To The Force Of Death And Constraint, An Enormous Force Of Persuasion That Is Called Culture.

Human Rebellion Ends In Metaphysical Revolution. It Progresses From Appearances To Acts, From The Dandy To The Revolutionary.

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.

Utopia Is That Which Is In Contradiction With Reality.

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

In A Universe Suddenly Divested Of Illusion And Lights, Man Feels An Alien, A Stranger. His Exile Is Without Remedy Since He Is Deprived Of The Memory Of A Lost Home Or The Hope Of A Promised Land.

The Four Conditions Of Happiness: Life In The Open Air, Love For Another Being,freedom From Ambition,creation

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

Sometimes At Night I Would Sleep Open-eyed Underneath A Sky Dripping With Stars. I Was Alive Then.

On Good Days, If You Trust Life, Life Has To Answer You.

Poverty, First Of All Was Never A Misfortune For Me; It Was Radiant With Sunlight.. I Owe It To My Family, First Of All, Who Lacked Everything And Who Envied Practically Nothing.

Beauty, No Doubt, Does Not Make Revolutions. But A Day Will Come When Revolutions Will Have Need Of Beauty.

What, Then, Is That Incalculable Feeling That Deprives The Mind Of The Sleep Necessary To Life? A World That Can Be Explained Even With Bad Reasons Is A Familiar World. But, On The Other Hand, In A Universe Suddenly Divested Of Illusions And Lights, Man Feels An Alien, A Stranger. His Exile Is Without Remedy Since He Is Deprived Of The Memory Of A Lost Home Or The Hope Of A Promised Land. This Divorce Between Man And His Life, The Actor And His Setting, Is Properly The Feeling Of Absurdity.

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

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.

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.

A Nihilist Is Not One Who Believes In Nothing , But One Who Does Not Believe In What Exists.

Only It Takes Time To Be Happy. A Lot Of Time. Happiness, Too, Is A Long Patience.

In Order To Exist, Man Must Rebel.

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

I Realized Then That A Man Who Had Lived Only One Day Could Easily Live For A Hundred Years In Prison. He Would Have Enough Memories To Keep Him From Being Bored

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

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

Liberty Is The Right Not To Lie.

Every Time I Hear A Political Speech Or I Read Those Of Our Leaders, I Am Horrified At Having, For Years, Heard Nothing Which Sounded Human. It Is Always The Same Words Telling The Same Lies. And The Fact That Men Accept This, That The People’s Anger Has Not Destroyed These Hollow Clowns, Strikes Me As Proof That Men Attribute No Importance To The Way They Are Governed; That They Gamble – Yes, Gamble – With A Whole Part Of Their Life And Their So Called 'vital Interests.

Once One's Up Against It, The Precise Manner Of One's Death Has Obviously Small Importance.

Likewise, Every Time Somebody Interjects To Speak Of My Honesty There Is Someone Who Quivers Inside Me.

Beginning To Think Is Beginning To Be Undermined. Society Has But Little Connection With Such Beginnings. The Worm Is In Man's Heart. That Is Where It Must Be Sought. One Must Follow And Understand This Fatal Game That Leads From Lucidity In The Face Of Existence To Flight From Light.

There Is So Much Stubborn Hope In The Human Heart.

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

If The Descent Is Thus Sometimes Performed In Sorrow, It Can Also Take Place In Joy.

A Writer Cannot Put Himself Today In Service Of Those Who Make History; He Is At The Service Of Those Who Suffer It.

The Artist Forges Himself To The Others, Midway Between The Beauty He Cannot Do Without And The Community He Cannot Tear Himself Away From. That Is Why True Artists Scorn Nothing: They Are Obliged To Understand Rather Than To Judge.

When There Is No Hope, One Must Invent Hope.

True Debauchery Is Liberating Because It Creates No Obligations. In It You Possess Only Yourself, Hence It Remains The Favorite Pastime Of The Great Lovers Of Their Own Person.

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.

Politics And The Fate Of Mankind Are Formed By Men Without Ideals And Without Greatness. Those Who Have Greatness Within Them Do Not Go In For Politics.

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.

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

We Must Stitch Up What Has Been Torn Apart, Render Justice Imaginable In The World Which Is So Obviously Unjust, Make Happiness Meaningful For Nations Poisoned By The Misery Of This Century. Naturally, It Is A Superhuman Task. But Tasks Are Called Superhuman When Men Take A Long Time To Complete Them, That Is All.

I Know Myself Too Well To Believe In Pure Virtue.

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.

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.

In Fact, It Comes To This: Nobody Is Capable Of Really Thinking About Anyone, Even In The Worst Calamity. For Really To Think About Someone Means Thinking About That Person Every Minute Of The Day, Without Letting One’s Thoughts Be Diverted By Anything- By Meals, By A Fly That Settles On One’s Cheek, By Household Duties, Or By A Sudden Itch Somewhere. But There Are Always Flies And Itches. That’s Why Life Is Difficult To Live.

Every Great Work Makes The Human Face More Admirable And Richer, And This Is Its Whole Secret.

Since We're All Going To Die, It's Obvious That When And How Don't Matter.

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.

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.

Without Memories, Without Hope, They Lived For The Moment Only. Indeed, The Here And Now Had Come To Mean Everything To Them. For There Is No Denying That The Plague Had Gradually Killed Off In All Of Us The Faculty Not Of Love Only But Even Of Friendship. Naturally Enough, Since Love Asks Something Of The Future, And Nothing Was Left Us But A Series Of Present Moments.

I Make Myself Strict Rules In Order To Correct My Nature. But It Is My Nature That I Finally Obey.

... 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.

He Had Opened His Heart To The Sublime Indifference Of The Universe

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

The Principles Which Men Give To Themselves End By Overwhelming Their Noblest Intentions.

There Was A Time When I Didn’t At Any Minute Have The Slightest Idea How I Could Reach The Next One. Yes, One Can Wage War In This World, Ape Love, Torture One’s Fellow Man, Or Merely Say Evil Of One’s Neighbour While Knitting. But, In Certain Cases, Carrying On, Merely Continuing, Is Superhuman.

Basically, At The Very Bottom Of Life, Which Seduces Us All, There Is Only Absurdity, And More Absurdity. And Maybe That's What Gives Us Our Joy For Living, Because The Only Thing That Can Defeat Absurdity Is Lucidity.

Men Are Convinced Of Your Arguments, Your Sincerity, And The Seriousness Of Your Efforts Only By Your Death.

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

Humans Are Creatures, Who Spent Their Lifes Trying To Convince Themselves, That Their Existence Is Not Absurd

There Is No Sun Without Shadow, And It Is Essential To Know The Night.

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

We Get Into The Habit Of Living Before Acquiring The Habit Of Thinking.

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

For Those Of Us Who Have Been Thrown Into Hell, Mysterious Melodies And The Torturing Images Of A Vanished Beauty Will Always Bring Us, In The Midst Of Crime And Folly, The Echo Of That Harmonious Insurrection Which Bears Witness, Throughout The Centuries, To The Greatness Of Humanity.

And It Was Like Knocking Four Quick Times On The Door Of Unhappiness.

A Guilty Conscience Needs To Confess. A Work Of Art Is A Confession.

Heroism Is Accessible. Happiness Is More Difficult.

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.

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

We Used To Wonder Where War Lived, What It Was That Made It So Vile. And Now We Realize That We Know Where It Lives... Inside Ourselves.

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