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Have You No Hope At All? And Do You Really Live With The Thought That When You Die, You Die, And Nothing Remains?" "yes," I Said.

-Albert Camus

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Have You No Hope

Albert Camus

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Have You No Hope At All? And Do You Really Live With The Thought That When You Die, You Die, And Nothing Remains?" "yes," I Said.

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When Love Ceases To Be Tragic It Is Something Else And The Individual Again Throws Himself In Search Of Tragedy.

Happiness And Love

Outside Of That Single Fatality Of Death, Everything, Joy Or Happiness, Is Liberty.

She Was Waiting, But She Didn't Know For What. She Was Aware Only Of Her Solitude, And Of The Penetrating Cold, And Of A Greater Weight In The Region Of Her Heart.

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

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.

... 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.

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.

The Society Based On Production Is Only Productive, Not Creative.

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.

Mostly, I Could Tell, I Made Him Feel Uncomfortable. He Didn't Understand Me, And He Was Sort Of Holding It Against Me. I Felt The Urge To Reassure Him That I Was Like Everybody Else, Just Like Everybody Else. But Really There Wasn't Much Point, And I Gave Up The Idea Out Of Laziness.

The Aim Of Art, The Aim Of A Life Can Only Be To Increase The Sum Of Freedom And Responsibility To Be Found In Every Man And In The World. It Cannot, Under Any Circumstances, Be To Reduce Or Suppress That Freedom, Even Temporarily.

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

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.

Lucifer Also Has Died With God, And From His Ashes Has Arisen A Spiteful Demon Who Does Not Even Understand The Object Of His Venture.

... 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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

La Ve Rite , Comme La Lumie' Re, Aveugle. Le Mensonge, Au Contraire, Est Un Beau Cre Puscule Qui Met Chaque Objet En Valeur. Truth, Like Light, Blinds. A Lie, On The Contrary, Is A Beautiful Twilight Which Shows The Value Of Each Object.

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

There Is No Frontier Between Being And Appearing.

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

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

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.

Metaphysical Rebellion Is A Claim, Motivated By The Concept Of A Complete Unity, Against The Suffering Of Life And Death And A Protest Against The Human Condition Both For Its Incompleteness, Thanks To Death, And Its Wastefulness, Thanks To Evil.

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

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.

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

Give Up The Tyranny Of Female Charm.

Many Fledgling Moralists In Those Days Were Going About Our Town Proclaiming There Was Nothing To Be Done About It And We Should Bow To The Inevitable. And Tarrou, Rieux, And Their Friends Might Give One Answer Or Another, But Its Conclusion Was Always The Same, Their Certitude That A Fight Must Be Put Up, In This Way Or That, And There Must Be No Bowing Down... There Was Nothing Admirable About This Attitude; It Was Merely Logical.

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.

Virtue Cannot Separate Itself From Reality Without Becoming A Principle Of Evil.

No Ends, Simply Means.

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

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

Heroism Is Accessible. Happiness Is More Difficult.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Art And Revolt Will Die Only With The Last Man.

I Have Never Been Able To Renounce The Light, The Pleasure Of Being, And The Freedom In Which I Grew Up.

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

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.

I Have The Loftiest Idea, And The Most Passionate One, Of Art. Much Too Lofty To Agree To Subject It To Anything. Much Too Passionate To Want To Divorce It From Anything.

The Absurd Hero's Refusal To Hope Becomes His Singular Ability To Live In The Present With Passion.

Live In The Present

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

Men Must Live And Create. Live To The Point Of Tears.

What Made Me Run Away Was Doubtless Not So Much The Fear Of Settling Down, But Of Settling Down Permanently In Something Ugly.

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

We Are All Special Cases.

The Revolutionary Government Was Required To Become The Government Of The War.

[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!

We Turn Our Backs On Nature; We Are Ashamed Of Beauty. Our Wretched Tragedies Have A Smell Of The Office Clinging To Them, And The Blood That Trickles From Them Is The Color Of Printer's Ink.

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

To Assert In Any Case That A Man Must Be Absolutely Cut Off From Society Because He Is Absolutely Evil Amounts To Saying That Society Is Absolutely Good, And No-one In His Right Mind Will Believe This Today.

The Absurd Is Sin Without God.

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

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

Happiness Implied A Choice, And Within That Choice A Concerted Will, A Lucid Desire.

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

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

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

... 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.

Gilbert Jonas, Painter, Believed In His Star.... His Own Faith Was Not, However, Without Its Virtues Because It Consisted In Admitting, In Some Obscure Way, That He Would Obtain Many Things Without Deserving Them.

The Laws Of Nature May Be Operative Up To A Certain Limit, Beyond Which They Turn Against Themselves To Give Birth To The Absurd.

Everything Is True, And Nothing Is True!

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.

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

Happiness And Love

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

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

... One Cannot Be Happy In Exile Or In Oblivion. One Cannot Always Be A Stranger. I Want To Return To My Homeland, Make All My Loved Ones Happy. I See No Further Than This.

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

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

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

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.

To Begin With, Poor People´s Memory Is Less Nourished Than That Of A Rich; It Has Fewer Landmarks In Space Because They Seldom Leave The Place Where They Live, And Fewer Reference Points In Time Throughtout Lives That Are Grey And Featureless.

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

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

Common Knowledge

If Nothing Had Any Meaning, You Would Be Right. But There Is Something That Still Has A Meaning.

Meaning Of Life

Freedom Is Not A Gift Received From The State Or Leader, But A Possession To Be Won Every Day By The Effort Of Each And The Union Of All.

To Stay Or To Go, It Amounted To The Same Thing.

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.

The Opposite Of An Idealist Is Too Often A Man Without Love.

The Sense Of Doing Good , The Satisfaction Of Being Right, The Joy Of Looking Favorably Upon Oneself, Dear Sir, Are Powerful Levers For Keeping Us Upright And Making Us Progress. On The Other Hand, If Men Are Deprived Of That Feeling, They Are Changed Into Rabid Dogs.

Stupidity Has A Knack Of Getting Its Way.

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

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.

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.

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.

In Order To Exist, Man Must Rebel.

Ce Que Je Sais De La Morale, C'est Au Football Que Je Le Dois. (i Know Of Morality, It Is Football That I Owe.)

Imagination Offers People Consolation For What They Cannot Be, And Humor For What They Actually Are.

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

The Look Of Success, When It Is Worn A Certain Way, Would Infuriate A Jackass.

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

I Like People Who Dream Or Talk To Themselves Interminably; I Like Them, For They Are Double. They Are Here And Elsewhere.

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

Happiness And Love

When There Is No Hope, One Must Invent Hope.

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

A Man Who Has Become Conscious Of The Absurd Is For Ever Bound To It.

...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.

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

We Must Admit That Today Conformity Is On The Left. To Be Sure, The Right Is Not Brilliant. But The Left Is In Complete Decadence, A Prisoner Of Words, Caught In Its Own Vocabulary, Capable Merely Of Stereotyped Replies, Constantly At A Loss When Faced With Truth, From Which It Nevertheless Claimed To Derive Its Laws. The Left Is Schizophrenic And Needs Doctoring Through Pitiless Self-criticism, Exercise Of The Heart, Close Reasoning, And A Little Modesty.

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

A Work Of Art Is A Confession.

Even When One Sits In The Prisoner's Dock, It Is Interesting To Hear Talk About Oneself.

Instead Of Killing And Dying In Order To Produce The Being That We Are Not, We Have To Live And Let Live In Order To Create What We Are.

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

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

But Too Many People Now Climb Onto The Cross Merely To Be Seen From A Greater Distance, Even If They Have To Trample Somewhat On The One Who Has Been There So Long.

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.

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

When I Was Young, I Expected From People More Than They Could Give: Neverending Friendship And Constant Excitement. Now I Expect Less Than They Can Actually Can Give: To Stay Close Silently. And Their Feelings, Friendship, Noble Deeds Always Seem Like A Miracle To Me: A True Grace.

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

An Intense Feeling Carries With It Its Own Universe, Magnificent Or Wretched As The Case May Be.

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

One Leader, One People, Signifies One Master And Millions Of Slaves.

We Are Living In The Era Of Premeditation And The Perfect Crime. Our Criminals Are No Longer Helpless Children Who Could Plead Love As Their Excuse. On The Contrary, They Are Adults And The Have The Perfect Alibi: Philosophy, Which Can Be Used For Any Purpose - Even For Transforming Murderers Into Judges.

I Sometimes Need To Write Things Which I Cannot Completely Control But Which Therefore Prove That What Is In Me Is Stronger Than I Am.

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

It Is Not Your Paintings I Like, It Is Your Painting.

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

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

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.

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

It Is Immoral Not To Tell.

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

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.

If You Keep On Excusing, You Eventually Give Your Blessing To The Slave Camp, To Cowardly Force, To Organized Executioners, To The Cynicism Of Great Political Monsters; You Finally Hand Over Your Brothers.

A True Masterpiece Does Not Tell Everything.

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.

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

Have You No Hope At All? And Do You Really Live With The Thought That When You Die, You Die, And Nothing Remains?" "yes," I Said.

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

This Is The Century Of Fear.

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

For What Gives Value To Travel Is Fear. It Breaks Down A Kind Of Inner Structure We Have. Travel Robs Us Of Such Refuge. Far From Our Own People, Our Own Language, Stripped Of All Our Props, Deprived Of Our Masks (one Doesn't Know The Fare On The Streetcars, Or Anything Else), We Are Completely On The Surface Of Ourselves.

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

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

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

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.

There Is Not One Talent For Living And Another For Creating. The Same Suffices For Both. And One Can Be Sure That The Talent That Could Not Produce But An Artificial Work Could Not Sustain But A Frivolous Life.

Great Ideas Come Into The World As Gently As Doves.

Nothing In Life Is Worth, Turning Your Back On, If You Love It.

Turning Your Back

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

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.

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

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!!'

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

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

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

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

Without Freedom There Is No Art.

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.

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

I Am Not Made For Politics Because I Am Incapable Of Wanting Or Accepting The Death Of The Adversary.

In Italian Museums Are Sometimes Found Little Painted Screens That The Priest Used To Hold In Front Of The Face Of Condemned Men To Hide The Scaffold From Them.

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.

Happiness Too Is Inevitable.

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

Without Work All Life Goes Rotten.

It Is Better To Burn Than To Disappear.

An Intellectual Is Someone Whose Mind Watches Itself.

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

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

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.

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

Psychology Is Action, Not Thinking About Oneself.

The Byronic Hero, Incapable Of Love, Or Capable Only Of An Impossible Love, Suffers Endlessly. He Is Solitary, Languid, His Condition Exhausts Him. If He Wants To Feel Alive, It Must Be In The Terrible Exaltation Of A Brief And Destructive Action.

One Must Place One's Principles In Big Things. For The Small, Graciousness Will Suffice.

Sometimes, Carrying On, Just Carrying On, Is The Superhuman Achievement.

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

Every Ideology Is Contrary To Human Psychology.

...any Authentic Creation Is A Gift To The Future.

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

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

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

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.

Love Cannot Accept What It Is. Everywhere On Earth It Cries Out Against Kindness, Compassion, Intelligence, Everything That Leads To Compromise. Love Demands The Impossible, The Absolute, The Sky On Fire, Inexhaustible Springtime, Life After Death, And Death Itself Transfigured Into Eternal Life.

At The Heart Of All Beauty Lies Something Inhuman.

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

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

It Is Easier To Kill What We Do Not Know.

To Create Today Is To Create Dangerously. Any Publication Is An Act, And That Act Exposes One To The Passions Of An Age That Forgives Nothing.

But, You Know, I Feel More Fellowship With The Defeated Than With Saints. Heroism And Sanctity Don't Really Appeal To Me, I Imagine. What Interests Me Is Being A Man.

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

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.

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.

Life Should Be Lived To The Point Of Tears

Freedom Is Not Constituted Primarily Of Privileges But Of Responsibilities.

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.

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