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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

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For The Existentials, Negation

Albert Camus

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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.

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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.

There Always Comes A Time When One Must Choose Between Contemplation And Action. This Is Called Becoming A Man.

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

If The Only Significant History Of Human Thought Were To Be Written, It Would Have To Be The History Of Its Successive Regrets And Its Impotences.

Myth Of Sisyphus

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.

Happiness And The Absurd Are Two Sons Of The Same Earth. They Are Inseparable. It Would Be A Mistake To Say That Happiness Necessarily Springs From The Absurd Discovery. It Happens As Well That The Felling Of The Absurd Springs From Happiness. "i Conclude That All Is Well," Says Oedipus, And That Remark Is Sacred. It Echoes In The Wild And Limited Universe Of Man. It Teaches That All Is Not, Has Not Been, Exhausted. It Drives Out Of This World A God Who Had Come Into It With Dissatisfaction And A Preference For Futile Suffering. It Makes Of Fate A Human Matter, Which Must Be Settled Among Men.

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 Plague")

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

Youth Is Above All A Collection Of Possibilities.

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!!

The Myth Of Unlimited Production Brings War In Its Train As Inevitably As Clouds Announce A Storm.

There's The Risk Of Being Loved...and That Would Keep Me From Being Happy.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Freedom Is Nothing But A Chance To Be Better.

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

The End Of Their Passion Consists Of Loving Uselessly At The Moment When It Is Pointless.

Happiness And Love

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

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.

Nothing Can Discourage The Appetite For Divinity In The Heart Of Man.

There Are Some Individuals Who Have Too Strong A Craving, A Will, And A Nostalgia For Happiness Ever To Reach It. They Always Retain A Bitter And Passionate Aftertaste, And That's The Best They Can Hope For.

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.

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

Nature Is A Burning And Frigid, Transparent And Limited Universe In Which Nothing Is Possible But Everything Is Given.

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.

For Instance, I Never Complained That My Birthday Was Overlooked; People Were Even Surprised, With A Touch Of Admiration, By My Discretion On This Subject. But The Reason For My Disinterestedness Was Even More Discreet: I Longed To Be Forgotten In Order To Be Able To Complain To Myself... Once My Solitude Was Thoroughly Proved, I Could Surrender To The Charms Of A Virile Self-pity.

I Felt The Urge To Reassure Him That I Was Like Everybody Else, Just Like Everybody Else.

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

Art And Revolt Will Die Only With The Last Man.

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.

The Realization That Life Is Absurd And Cannot Be An End, But Only A Beginning. This Is A Truth Nearly All Great Minds Have Taken As Their Starting Point. It Is Not This Discovery That Is Interesting, But Theconsequences And Rules Of Action Drawn From It.

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.

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

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

We All Have A Weakness For Beauty.

Tout Re Volutionnaire Finit En Oppresseur Ou En He Re Tique. Every Revolutionary Ends As An Oppressor Or A Heretic.

Realism Should Only Be The Means Of Expression Of Religious Genius... Or, At The Other Extreme, The Artistic Expressions Of Monkeys Which Are Quite Satisfied With Mere Imitation. In Fact, Art Is Never Realistic Though Sometimes It Is Tempted To Be. To Be Really Realistic A Description Would Have To Be Endless.

We Don't Have The Time To Completely Be Ourselves. We Only Have The Room To Be Happy.

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

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.

The Struggle To The Top Alone Will Make A Human Heart Swell.

Life Is A Sum Of All Your Choices". So, What Are You Doing Today?

Decisions You Make

Life Is The Sum Of Your Choices.

Thus I Draw From The Absurd Three Consequences, Which Are My Revolt, My Freedom, And My Passion. By The Mere Activity Of Consciousness I Transform Into A Rule Of Life What Was An Invitation To Death—and I Refuse Suicide.

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.

We're All Special Cases.

[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!

The Most Loathsome Materialism Is Not The Kind People Usually Think Of, But The Sort That Attempts To Let Dead Ideas Pass For Living Realities, Diverting Into Sterile Myths The Stubborn And Lucid Attention We Give To What We Have Within Us That Must Forever Die.

Those Who Write Clearly Have Readers.

Writers And Writing

All Modern Revolutions Have Ended In A Reinforcement Of The Power Of The State.

I Was Absent At The Moment I Took Up The Most Space.

Get Scared. It Will Do You Good. Smoke A Bit, Stare Blankly At Some Ceilings, Beat Your Head Against Some Walls, Refuse To See Some People, Paint And Write. Get Scared Some More. Allow Your Little Mind To Do Nothing But Function. Stay Inside, Go Out - I Don't Care What You'll Do; But Stay Scared As Hell. You Will Never Be Able To Experience Everything. So, Please, Do Poetical Justice To Your Soul And Simply Experience Yourself.

Experience Yourself

We Are Not So Mad As To Think That We Shall Create A World In Which Murder Will Not Occur. We Are Fighting For A World In Which Murder Will No Longer Be Legal.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

What Is A Firm Hand To Me, Of What Use To Me Is This Astonishing Power If I Cannot Change The Order Of Things, If I Cannot Make The Sun Set In The East, That Suffering Diminish And That Beings No Longer Die?

How Had I Not Seen That There Was Nothing More Important Than An Execution, And That When You Come Right Down To It, It Was The Only Thing A Man Could Truly Be Interested In?

The Certainty Of A God Giving Meaning To Life Far Surpasses In Attractiveness The Ability To Behave Badly With Impunity. The Choice Would Not Be Hard To Make. But There Is No Choice And That Is Where The Bitterness Comes In. The Absurd Does Not Liberate; It Binds.

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.

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.

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.

I Would Rather Not Have Upset Him, But I Couldn't See Any Reason To Change My Life. Looking Back On It, I Wasn't Unhappy. When I Was A Student, I Had Lots Of Ambitions Like That. But When I Had To Give Up My Studies I Learned Very Quickly That None Of It Really Mattered.

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

God Put Self-pity By The Side Of Despair Like The Cure By The Side Of The Disease.

We Get Into The Habit Of Living Before Acquiring The Habit Of Thinking. In That Race Which Daily Hastens Us Towards Death, The Body Maintains Its Irreparable Lead.

A Man's Work Is Nothing But This Slow Trek To Rediscover, Through The Detours Of Art, Those Two Or Three Great And Simple Images In Whose Presence His Heart First Opened.

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

He Seemed So Certain About Everything, Didn't He? And Yet None Of His Certainties Was Worth One Hair Of A Woman's Head. He Wasn't Even Sure He Was Alive, Because He Was Living Like A Dead Man.

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

Can One Be A Saint If God Does Not Exist? That Is The Only Concrete Problem I Know Of Today.

In The Past, The Poverty They Shared Had A Certain Sweetness About It. When The End Of The Day Came And They Would Eat Their Dinner In Silence With The Oil Lamp Between Them, There Was A Secret Joy In Such Simplicity, Such Retrenchment.

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

You Have So Much Inside You, And The Noblest Happiness Of All. Don’t Just Wait For A Man To Come Along. That’s The Mistake So Many Women Make. Find Your Happiness In Yourself.

Morality, When Formal, Devours.

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

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.

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

There Is Not A Single True Work Of Art That Has Not In The End Added To The Inner Freedom Insight And Life Of Each Person Who Has Known And Loved It.

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

Sometimes, From Beyond The Skycrapers, The Cry Of A Tugboat Finds You In Your Insomnia, And You Remember That This Desert Of Iron And Cement Is An Island.

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.

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

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

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.

Suffering Gives Us No Special Rights.

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

It Should Be Pointed Out For Our Own Guidance In The West That The Continual Signing Of Manifestoes And Protests Is One Of The Surest Ways Of Undermining The Efficacy And Dignity Of The Intellectual. There Exists A Permanent Blackmail That We All Know And That We Must Have The Often Solitary Courage To Resist.

And For All His Life It Would Be Kindness And Love That Made Him Cry, Never Pain Or Persecution, Which On The Contrary Only Reinforced His Spirit And His Resolution.

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

Absolute Justice Is Achieved By The Suppression Of All Contradiction, Therefore It Destroys Freedom.

... There Are Two Types Of Happiness And I Have Chosen That Of The Murderers. For I Am Happy. There Was A Time When I Thought I Had Reached The Limit Of Distress. Beyond That Limit, There Is A Sterile And Magnificent Happiness.

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.

There Was The Same Dazzling Red Glare. The Sea Gasped For Air With Each Shallow, Stifled Wave That Broke On The Sand. ...with Every Blade Of Light That Flashed Off The Sand, From A Bleached Shell Or A Peice Of Broken Glass, My Jaws Tightened. I Walked For A Long Time.

I Understood, By Dint Of Digging Into My Memories, That Modesty Helped Me To Shine, Humility Helped Me To Triumph And Virtue To Oppress.

Any Country Where I Am Not Bored Is A Country That Teaches Me Nothing.

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

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

I Know [my Label], In Any Case: A Double Face, A Charming Janus, And Underneath, The House Motto: "be Wary". On My Business Cards:"jean-baptiste Clamence, Actor".

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.

But It's Not Easy. I've Been Thinking It Over For Years. While We Loved Each Other We Didn't Need Words To Make Ourselves Understood. But People Don't Love Forever. A Time Came When I Should Have Found The Words To Keep Her With Me, Only I Couldn't.

After Another Moment's Silence She Mumbled That I Was Peculiar, That That Was Probably Why She Loved Me But That One Day I Might Disgust Her For The Very Same Reason.

At One Time Or Another All Normal People Have Wished Their Loved Ones Were Dead.

Don't Lies Eventually Lead To The Truth? And Don't All My Stories, True Or False, Tend Toward The Same Conclusion? Don't They All Have The Same Meaning? So What Does It Matter Whether They Are True Or False If, In Both Cases, They Are Significant Of What I Have Been And What I Am? Sometimes It Is Easier To See Clearly Into The Liar Than Into The Man Who Tells The Truth. Truth, Like Light, Blinds. Falsehood, On The Contrary, Is A Beautiful Twilight That Enhances Every Object.

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.

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

After All, I Do Not Have So Many Ways Of Proving That I Am Free. We Is Always Free At The Expense Of Someone Else. It Is A Bother,but It Is Normal.

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.

We Are Rebels For A Cause, Poets With A Dream , And We Won't Let This World Die Without A Fight.

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

In Normal Times All Of Us Know, Whether Consciously Or Not, That There Is No Love Which Can't Be Bettered; Nevertheless, We Reconcile Ourselves More Or Less Easily To The Fact That Ours Has Never Risen Above The Average.

And Never Have I Felt So Deeply At One And The Same Time So Detached From Myself And So Present In The World.

In Our Well-policed Society We Recognize That An Illness Is Serious From The Fact That We Don't Dare Speak Of It Directly.

Rule: Start By Looking For What Is Valid In Every Man.

Methods Of Thought Which Claim To Give The Lead To Our World In The Name Of Revolution Have Become, In Reality, Ideologies Of Consent And Not Of Rebellion.

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.

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

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.

We're Going Forward, But Nothing Changes.

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

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

For The First Time, The First, I Laid My Heart Open To The Benign Indifference Of The Universe. To Feel It So Like Myself, Indeed So Brotherly, Made Me Realize That I'd Been Happy, And That I Was Happy Still.

I Shall Not, As Far As I Am Concerned, Try To Pass Myself Off As A Christian In Your Presence. I Share With You The Same Revulsion From Evil. But I Do Not Share Your Hope, And I Continue To Struggle Against This Universe In Which Children Suffer And Die.

The Absurd Is Lucid Reason Noting Its Limits.

What The World Requires Of The Christians Is That They Should Continue To Be Christians.

Where There Is No Hope, We Must Invent It.

I Grew Up With The Sea, And Poverty For Me Was Sumptuous; Then I Lost The Sea And Found All Luxuries Gray And Poverty Unbearable.

Everything Considered, A Determined Soul Will Always Manage.

There Is No Frontier Between Being And Appearing.

The Future Is The Only Kind Of Property That The Masters Willingly Concede To The Slaves.

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

The Slave Begins By Demanding Justice And Ends By Wanting To Wear A Crown.

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

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

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

But Sometimes It Takes More Courage To Live Than To Shoot Yourself.

I'd Have Given Ten Conversations With Einstein For A First Meeting With A Pretty Chorus Girl.

To Grow Old Is To Pass From Passion To Compassion.

We Must Learn How To Lend Ourselves To Dreaming When Dreams Lend Themselves To Us.

What Can A Meaning Outside My Condition Mean To Me? I Can Understand Only In Human Terms. What I Touch, What Resists Me - That I Understand. And These Two Certainties - My Appetite For The Absolute And For Unity And The Impossibility Of Reducing This World To A Rational And Reasonable Principle - I Also Know That I Cannot Reconcile Them. What Other Truth Can I Admit Without Lying, Without Bringing In A Hope I Lack And Which Means Nothing Within The Limits Of My Conditions?

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

If We Believe In Nothing, If Nothing Has Any Meaning And If We Can Affirm No Values Whatsoever, Then Everything Is Possible And Nothing Has Any Importance.

People Don't Love Each Other At Our Age, Marthe—they Please Each Other, That's All. Later On, When You're Old And Impotent, You Can Love Someone. At Our Age, You Just Think You Do. That's All It Is.

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

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.

But When A Man Has Had Only Four Hours' Sleep He Isn't Sentimental. He Sees Things As They Are: That Is To Say, He Sees Them In The Garish Light Of Justice; Hideous, Witless Justice.

It Takes Time To Live. Like Any Work Of Art, Life Needs To Be Thought About.

When The Imagination Sleeps, Words Are Emptied Of Their Meaning: A Deaf Population Absent-mindedly Registers The Condemnation Of A Man. ... There Is No Other Solution But To Speak Out And Show The Obscenity Hidden Under The Verbal Cloak.

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.

There Can Be No Question Of Holding Forth On Ethics. I Have Seen People Behave Badly With Great Morality And I Note Every Day That Integrity Has No Need Of Rules

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

The Absurd Is The Essential Concept And The First Truth.

Happiness And The Absurd Are Two Sons Of The Same Earth. They Are Inseparable.

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.

I See Many People Die Because They Judge That Life Is Not Worth Living. I See Others Paradoxically Getting Killed For The Ideas Or Illusions That Give Them A Reason For Living (what Is Called A Reason For Living Is Also An Excellent Reason For Dying). I Therefore Conclude That The Meaning Of Life Is The Most Urgent Of Questions.

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.

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.

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

It Was Previously A Question Of Finding Out Whether Or Not Life Had To Have A Meaning To Be Lived. It Now Becomes Clear On The Contrary That It Will Be Lived All The Better If It Has No Meaning

Travel, Which Is Like A Greater And A Graver Science, Brings Us Back To Ourselves.

For There Is Merely Bad Luck In Not Being Loved; There Is Misfortune In Not Loving.

There Are Always Reasons For Murdering A Man. But There Is No Justification For His Existence.

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

A Man Wants To Earn Money In Order To Be Happy, And His Whole Effort And The Best Of A Life Are Devoted To The Earning Of That Money. Happiness Is Forgotten; The Means Are Taken For The End.

There Are Crimes Of Passion And Crimes Of Logic. The Boundary Between Them Is Not Clearly Defined.

Obstinacy Alone Is Not A Virtue.

I Know Myself Too Well To Believe In Pure Virtue.

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.

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.

Liberty Is Dangerous, As Hard To Get Along With As It Is Exciting.

I Can Feel This Heart Inside Me And I Conclude It Exists. I Can Touch This World And I Also Conclude That It Exists. All My Knowledge Ends At This Point. The Rest Is Hypothesis.

To Live Is In Itself A Value Judgment. To Breathe Is To Judge.

On The Whole, Men Are More Good Than Bad; That, However, Isn't The Real Point. But They Are More Or Less Ignorant, And It Is This That We Call Vice Or Virtue; The Most Incorrigible Vice Being That Of An Ignorance That Fancies It Knows Everything And Therefore Claims For Itself The Right To Kill. The Soul Of The Murderer Is Blind; And There Can Be No True Goodness Nor True Love Without The Utmost Clear-sightedness.

I Have A Very Old And Very Faithful Attachment For Dogs. I Like Them Because They Always Forgive.

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.

Liberty Is Dangerous.

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

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.

There Is So Much Stubborn Hope In The Human Heart.

The Love Of God Is A Hard Love. It Demands Total Self-surrender, Disdain Of Our Human Personality. And Yet It Alone Can Reconcile Us To Suffering And The Deaths Of Children, It Alone Can Justify Them, Since We Cannot Understand Them, And We Can Only Make God's Will Ours.

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

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.

To Lose One's Life Is No Great Matter; When The Time Comes I'll Have The Courage To Lose Mine. But What's Intolerable Is To See One's Life Being Drained Of Meaning, To Be Told There's No Reason For Existing. A Man Can't Live Without Some Reason For Living.

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.

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.

I Am Alive Again, Now That I Can No Longer Stand To Live.

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.

At A Certain Level Of Suffering Or Injustice No One Can Do Anything For Anyone. Pain Is Solitary.

Everything Is True, And Nothing Is True!

... 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.

When The Body Is Sad, The Heart Languishes.

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