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Freedom Is Not A Reward Or A Decoration That You Toast In Champagne. On The Contrary, It's Hard Graft And A Long-distance Run, All Alone, Very Exhausting. Alone In A Dreary Room, Alone In The Dock Before The Judges, And Alone To Make Up Your Mind, Before Yourself And Before The Judgement Of Others. At The End Of Every Freedom There Is A Sentence, Which Is Why Freedom Is Too Heavy To Bear.

-Albert Camus

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Freedom Is Not A

Albert Camus

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Freedom Is Not A Reward Or A Decoration That You Toast In Champagne. On The Contrary, It's Hard Graft And A Long-distance Run, All Alone, Very Exhausting. Alone In A Dreary Room, Alone In The Dock Before The Judges, And Alone To Make Up Your Mind, Before Yourself And Before The Judgement Of Others. At The End Of Every Freedom There Is A Sentence, Which Is Why Freedom Is Too Heavy To Bear.

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I Looked Up At The Mass Of Signs And Stars In The Night Sky And Laid Myself Open For The First Time To The Benign Indifference Of The World.

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.

None Of The Evils Which Totalitarianism ... Claims To Remedy Is Worse Than Totalitarianism Itself.

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Yes, There Was An Element Of Abstraction And Unreality In Misfortune. But When An Abstraction Starts To Kill You, You Have To Get To Work On It.

Psychology Is Action, Not Thinking About Oneself. We Continue To Shape Our Personality All Our Life. To Know Oneself, One Should Assert Oneself.

Truth, Like Light, Blinds. Falsehood, On The Contrary, Is A Beautiful Twilight That Enhances Every Object.

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.

Art, At Least, Teaches Us That Man Cannot Be Explained By History Alone And That He Also Finds A Reason For His Existence In The Order Of Nature.

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.

True Artists Scorn Nothing.

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

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

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Creating Is Living Doubly. The Groping, Anxious Quest Of A Proust, His Meticulous Collecting Of Flowers, Of Wallpapers, And Of Anxieties, Signifies Nothing Else.

I Love Life - That’s My Real Weakness. I Love It So Much That I Am Incapable Of Imagining What Is Not Life.

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

A Fate Is Not A Punishment.

Lying Is Not Only Saying What Isn't True. It Is Also, In Fact Especially, Saying More Than Is True And, In The Case Of The Human Heart, Saying More Than One Feels. We All Do It, Every Day, To Make Life Simpler.

Life Should Be Lived To The Point Of Tears

The Only Real Progress Lies In Learning To Be Wrong All Alone.

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

It Is Better To Burn Than To Disappear.

But What Is Happiness Except The Simple Harmony Between A Man And The Life He Leads?

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

We Have To Live And Let Live In Order To Create What We Are.

Live And Let Live

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

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

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

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.

Integrity Has No Need Of Rules.

There Is But One Freedom, To Put Oneself Right With Death. After That Everything Is Possible.

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 French Revolution Gave Birth To No Artists But Only To A Great Journalist, Desmoulins, And To An Under-the-counter Writer, Sade. The Only Poet Of The Times Was The Guillotine.

Happiness Is Not Everything And Men Have Their Duties. Mine Is To Find My Mother, A Homeland

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

We All Carry Within Us Places Of Exile, Our Crimes, Our Ravages. Our Task Is Not To Unleash Them On The World; It Is To Transform Them In Ourselves And Others.

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

Truth, Like Light, Is Blinding. Lies, On The Other Hand, Are A Beautiful Dusk, Which Enhances The Value Of Each Object.

He Was Conscious Of The Disastrous Fact That Love And Desire Must Be Expressed In The Same Way.

Because,' Cormery Went On, 'when I Was Very Young, Very Foolish, And Very Much Alone ... You Paid Attention To Me And, Without Seeming To, You Opened For Me The Door To Everything I Love In The World.

If Christianity Is Pessimistic As To Man, It Is Optimistic As To Human Destiny. Well, I Can Say That, Pessimistic As To Human Destiny, I Am Optimistic As To Man.

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

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.

In The World Today, Only A Philosophy Of Eternity Could Justify Non-violence.

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

No, Father, I've A Very Different Idea Of Love. And Until My Dying Day I Shall Refuse To Love A Scheme Of Things In Which Children Are Put To Torture.

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

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

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Happiness And Love

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

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Happiness And Love

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A Man Devoid Of Hope And Conscious Of Being So Has Ceased To Belong To The Future.

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Meaning Of Life

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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.

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 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.

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

Without Freedom There Is No Art.

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

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.

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Working Conditions

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If Something Is Going To Happen To Me, I Want To Be There.

A Taste For Truth At Any Cost Is A Passion Which Spares Nothing.

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

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

At That Moment He Knew What His Mother Was Thinking, And That She Loved Him. But He Knew, Too, That To Love Someone Means Relatively Little; Or, Rather, That Love Is Never Strong Enough To Find The Words Befitting It. Thus He And His Mother Would Always Love Each Other Silently. And One Day She--or He--would Die, Without Ever, All Their Lives Long, Having Gone Farther Than This By Way Of Making Their Affection Known.

There Is No Fate That Cannot Be Surmounted By Scorn.

Some Other Memories Of The Funeral Have Stuck In My Mind. The Old Boy’s Face, For Instance, When He Caught Up With Us For The Last Time, Just Outside The Village. His Eyes Were Streaming With Tears, Of Exhaustion Or Distress, Or Both Together. But Because Of The Wrinkles They Couldn’t Flow Down. They Spread Out, Crisscrossed, And Formed A Smooth Gloss On The Old, Worn Face.

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

The Temptation Shared By All Forms Of Intelligence: Cynicism.

But Perhaps We Should Love What We Cannot Understand

A Person I Knew Used To Divide Human Beings Into Three Categories: Those Who Prefer To Have Nothing To Hide Rather Than Being Obliged To Lie, Those Who Prefer Lying To Having Nothing To Hide, And Finally Those Who Like Both Lying And The Hidden.

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

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 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.

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

You Know Very Well That I No Longer Think. I Am Far Too Intelligent For That.

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

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.

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

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

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.

He Knew Now That It Was His Own Will To Happiness Which Must Make The Next Move. But If He Was To Do So, He Realized That He Must Come To Terms With Time, That To Have Time Was At Once The Most Magnificent And The Most Dangerous Of Experiments. Idleness Is Fatal Only To The Mediocre.

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?

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.

For Ever, I Shall Be A Stranger To Myself.

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.

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.

Where There Is No Hope, We Must Invent It.

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.

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.

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

A Lot Of Jobs Don't Allow You To Be Who You Are. There Is Dignity In Work Only When It Is Work Freely Accepted.

In Order To Be Created, A Work Of Art Must First Make Use Of The Dark Forces Of The Soul

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

The Primordial Sea Indefatigably Repeats The Same Words And Casts Up The Same Astonished Beings On The Same Sea-shore.

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

There Is No Love Of Life Without Despair Of Life.

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

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

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

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

Life Is The Result Of All Your Choices.

How Do You Put Everyone In The Pool, So You Have The Right To Dry Yourself In The Sun?

She Was Wearing A Pair Of My Pajamas With The Sleeves Rolled Up. When She Laughed I Wanted Her Again. A Minute Later She Asked Me If I Loved Her. I Told Her It Didn't Mean Anything But That I Didn't Think So. She Looked Sad. But As We Were Fixing Lunch, And For No Apparent Reason, She Laughed In Such A Way That I Kissed Her.

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.

No Ends, Simply Means.

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.

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.

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.

You Will Never Live If You Are Looking For The Meaning Of Life.

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

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

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.

Existence Is Illusory And It Is Eternal.

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.

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

The More I Accuse Myself, The More Right I Have To Judge You. Even Better, I Make You Judge Yourself, Which Comforts Me The More.

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

Without Work All Life Goes Rotten.

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.

In That Night Alive With Signs And Stars, I Opened Myself To The Gentle Indifference Of The World. Finding It So Much Like Myself--like A Brother, Really--i Felt That I Had Been Happy And That I Was Happy Again.

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

Don't Walk Behind Me; I May Not Lead. Don't Walk In Front Of Me; I May Not Follow. Just Walk Beside Me And Be My Friend.

What Is A Rebel? A Man Who Says No.

What I Believe To Be True I Must Therefore Preserve. What Seems To Me So Obvious, Even Against Me, I Must Support.

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

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

Every Authentic Work Of Art Is A Gift Offered To The Future.

Those Who Love, Friends And Lovers, Know That Love Is Not Only A Blinding Flash, But Also A Long And Painful Struggle In The Darkness For The Realization Of Definitive Recognition And Reconciliation.

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

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

...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.

There Exists An Obvious Fact That Seems Utterly Moral: Namely, That A Man Is Always Prey To His Truths. Once He Has Admitted Them, He Cannot Free Himself From Them. One Has To Pay Something. A Man Who Has Become Conscious Of The Absurd Is Forever Bound To It.

I Was Assailed By Memories Of A Life That Wasn't Mine Anymore, But One In Which I'd Found The Simplest And Most Lasting Joys.

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

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

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

As Soon As One Does Not Kill Oneself, One Must Keep Silent About Life.

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.

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.

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

I Don’t Know Whether This World Has A Meaning That Transcends It. But I Know That I Cannot Know That Meaning And That It Is Impossible For Me Just Now To Know It.

Intelligence In Chains Loses In Lucidity What It Gains In Intensity.

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.

I Feel More Fellowship With The Defeated Than With Saints.

The Nobility Of Our Calling Will Always Be Rooted In Two Commitments Difficult To Observe: Refusal To Lie About What We Know, And Resistance To Oppression.

Every Artist Preserves Deep Within Him A Single Source From Which, Throughout His Lifetime, He Draws What He Is, And What He Says. When The Source Dries Up, The Work Withers And Crumbles.

False Judges Are Held Up In The World's Admiration And I Alone Know The True Ones.

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.

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

A Craving For Freedom And Independence Is Generated Only In A Man Still Living On Hope.

In The Light, The Earth Remains Our First And Our Last Love. Our Brothers Are Breathing Under The Same Sky As We; Justice Is A Living Thing. Now Is Born That Strange Joy Which Helps One Live And Die, And Which We Shall Never Again Postpone To A Later Time.

Here Lives A Free Man. Nobody Serves Him.

Myths Are Made For The Imagination To Breath Life Into Them.

I Felt That I Had Been Happy And That I Was Happy Again. For Everything To Be Consummated, For Me To Feel Less Alone, I Had Only To Wish That There Be A Large Crowd Of Spectators The Day Of My Execution And That They Greet Me With Cries Of Hate.

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

Whoever Today Speaks Of Human Existence In Terms Of Power, Efficiency, And Historical Tasks Is An Actual Or Potential Assassin.

No Doubt Our Love Was Still There, But Quite Simply It Was Unusable, Heavy To Carry, Inert Inside Of Us, Sterile As Crime Or Condemnation. It Was No Longer Anything Except A Patience With No Future And A Stubborn Wait.

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.

Rebellion, In Man, Is The Refusal To Be Treated As An Object And To Be Reduced To Simple Historical Terms. It Is The Affirmation Of A Nature Common To All Men, Which Eludes The World Of Power.

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

Real Generosity Toward The Future Lies In Giving All To The Present.

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Vicente Del Bosque

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