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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.

-Albert Camus

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I Spent A Long

Albert Camus

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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.

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What, In Fact, Is A Novel But A Universe In Which Action Is Endowed With Form, Where Final Words Are Pronounced, Where People Possess One Another Completely, And Where Life Assumes The Aspect Of Destiny?

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.

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

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

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.

If There Is A Soul, It Is A Mistake To Believe That It Is Given To Us Fully Created. It Is Created Here, Throughout A Whole Life. And Living Is Nothing Else But That Long And Painful Bringing Forth.

The Desire For Possession Is Insatiable, To Such A Point That It Can Survive Even Love Itself. To Love, Therefore, Is To Sterilize The Person One Loves.

Man Is The Only Creature That Refuses To Be What He Is.

When You Have Once Seen The Glow Of Happiness On The Face Of A Beloved Person, You Know That A Man Can Have No Vocation But To Awaken That Light On The Faces Surrounding Him. In The Depth Of Winter, I Finally Learned That Within Me There Lay An Invincible Summer.

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.

My Great Idea Is That We Must Forgive The Pope. First Of All, He Needs It More Than Anyone Else. Besides, It Is The Only Way Of Placing Oneself Above Him.

The Evil That Is In The World Always Comes Of Ignorance, And Good Intentions May Do As Much Harm As Malevolence, If They Lack Understanding.

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

Freedom Is The Right To Never Have To Lie.

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

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

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

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

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?

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.

That's The Way Man Is, Cher Monsieur. He Has Two Faces: He Can't Love Without Self-love.

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!!'

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

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

We Come Into The World Laden With The Weight Of An Infinite Necessity.

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

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.

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

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

There Can Be No True Goodness, Nor True Love, Without The Utmost Clear-sightedness.

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.

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

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.

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

Rebellion Cannot Exist Without A Strange Form Of Love.

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

It Is In The Thick Of Calamity That One Gets Hardened To The Truth - In Other Words, To Silence.

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.

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

To Be Born To Create, To Love, To Win At Games Is To Be Born To Live In Time Of Peace. But War Teaches Us To Lose Everything And Become What We Were Not. It All Becomes A Question Of Style.

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.

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

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

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

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.

In That Daily Effort In Which Intelligence And Passion Mingle And Delight Each Other, The Absurd Man Discovers A Discipline That Will Make Up The Greatest Of His Strengths. The Required Diligence And Doggedness And Lucidity Thus Resemble The Conqueror's Attitude. To Create Is Likewise To Give A Shape To One's Fate. For All These Characters, Their Work Defines Them At Least As Much As It Is Defined By Them. The Actor Taught Us This: There Is No Frontier Between Being And Appearing.

For Rich People, The Sky Is Just An Extra, A Gift Of Nature. The Poor, On The Other Hand, Can See It As It Is, A Gift Of Infinite Grace.

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

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

If, After All, Men Cannot Always Make History Have A Meaning, They Can Always Act So That Their Own Lives Have One.

For Ever, I Shall Be A Stranger To Myself.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Everything Considered, A Determined Soul Will Always Manage.

... 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.

Love Is The Kind Of Illness That Does Not Spare The Intelligent Or The Dull.

In Order To Speak About All And To All, One Has To Speak Of What All Know And Of The Reality Common To Us All. The Sea, Rains, Necessity, Desire, The Struggle Against Death... These Are Things That Unite Us All.

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

He Was Expressing His Certainty That My Appeal Would Be Granted, But I Was Carrying The Burden Of A Sin From Which I Had To Free Myself. According To Him, Human Justice Was Nothing And Divine Justice Was Everything. I Pointed Out It Was The Former That Had Condemned Me.

In Fact, Other People Create For Lack Of Power. I, On The Other Hand, Do Not Need A Work: I Live.

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.

Don't Wait For The Last Judgment - It Takes Place Every Day.

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

My Chief Occupation, Despite Appearances, Has Always Been Love.

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.

Everybody Knows Life Isn't Worth Living.

To Remain A Man In Today's World, One Must Have Not Only Unfailing Energy And Unwavering Intensity, One Must Also Have A Little Luck.

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

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

People Have Played On Words And Pretended To Believe That Refusing To Grant A Meaning To Life Necessarily Leads To Declaring That It Is Not Worth Living. In Truth, There Is No Necessary Common Measure Between These Two Judgments.

No Matter What Cause One Defends, It Will Suffer Permanent Disgrace If One Resorts To Blind Attacks On Crowds Of Innocent People.

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

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

To Be Famous, In Fact, One Has Only To Kill One's Landlady.

With Rebellion, Awareness Is Born

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

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.

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.

Where There Is No Hope, It Is Incumbent On Us To Invent It.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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".

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

We Rarely Confide In Those Who Are Better Than We Are.

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.

...the Play Of The Toughest And Most Lucid Mind Are At The Same Time Both Lavished Andsquandered.

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

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

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

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.

Maybe She Had Become Tired Of Being The Girlfriend Of A Condemned Man. It Also Occured To Me That Maybe She Was Sick, Or Dead. These Things Happen. [...] Anyway, After That, Remembering Marie Meant Nothing To Me. That Seemed Perfectly Normal To Me, Since I Understood Very Well That People Would Forget Me When I Was Dead.

It Is Impossible To Give A Clear Account Of The World, But Art Can Teach Us To Reproduce It-just As The World Reproduces Itself In The Course Of Its Eternal Gyrations. The Primordial Sea Indefatigably Repeats The Same Words And Casts Up The Same Astonished Beings On The Same Sea-shore.

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

Nihilism Is Not Only Despair And Negation, But Above All The Desire To Despair And To Negate.

I Would Rather Live My Life As If There Is A God And Die To Find Out There Isn't, Than Live As If There Isn't And To Die To Find Out That There Is.

If There Is A God

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

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

It Is Necessary To Fall In Love... If Only To Provide An Alibi For All The Random Despair You Are Going To Feel Anyway.

Falling In Love

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

Somebody Has To Have The Last Word. If Not, Every Argument Could Be Opposed By Another And We'd Never Be Done With It.

What Will Be Left Of The Power Of Example If It Is Proved That Capital Punishment Has Another Power, And A Very Real One, Which Degrades Men To The Point Of Shame, Madness, And Murder?

There Is Scarcely Any Passion Without Struggle.

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

I Like These People Swarming On The Sidewalks, Wedged Into A Little Space Of Houses And Canals, Hemmed In By Fogs, Cold Lands, And The Sea Streaming Like A Wet Wash. I Like Them, For They Are Double. They Are Here And Elsewhere.

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

Capital Punishment Is The Most Premeditated Of Murders.

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.

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.

In Order To Exist Just Once In The World, It Is Necessary Never Again To Exist.

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

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.

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

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

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

People Believe A Man Is In Distress Because His Loved One Dies In One Day. But His Real Pain Is Less Futile: It Is That He Finds Out That Sadness Too Does Not Last. Even Pain Has No Meaning.

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

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?

History, As An Entirety, Could Only Exist In The Eyes Of An Observer Outside It And Outside The World. History Only Exists, In The Final Analysis, For God.

What Would Become Of The World If The Condemned Started To Confide Their Heartaches To The Executioners?

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.

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.

When I See A New Face, Something Sets Off An Alarm Bell Inside Me. 'slow Down! Danger!' Even When The Attraction Is Strongest, I Am On My Guard.

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.

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.

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

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.

Autumn Is A Second Spring When Every Leaf Is A Flower.

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.

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

I Felt As Though I Was Partly Unlearning What I Had Never Learned And Yet Knew So Well: I Mean, How To Live.

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

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

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

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

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.

There Is But One Freedom, To Put Oneself Right With Death. After That Everything Is Possible. I Cannot Force You To Believe In God. Believing In God Amounts To Coming To Terms With Death. When You Have Accepted Death, The Problem Of God Will Be Solved, And Not The Reverse.

Obstinacy Alone Is Not A Virtue.

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.

Art Does Not Tolerate Reason.

The Society Of Merchants Can Be Defined As A Society In Which Things Disappear In Favor Of Signs. When A Ruling Class Measures Its Fortunes, Not By The Acre Of Land Or The Ingot Of Gold, But By The Number Of Figures Corresponding Ideally To A Certain Number Of Exchange Operations, It Thereby Condemns Itself To Setting A Certain Kind Of Humbug At The Center Of Its Experience And Its Universe. A Society Founded On Signs Is, In Its Essence, An Artificial Society In Which Man's Carnal Truth Is Handled As Something Artificial.

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

Cruel Irony, The Poor Man Tormented With Hunger Feeds Those Who Plead His Case.

A True Masterpiece Does Not Tell Everything.

No One Who Lives In The Sunlight Of Gratitude That Things Aren't Worse Makes A Failure Of His Or Her Life.

Stupidity Has A Knack Of Getting Its Way; As We Should See If We Were Not Always So Much Wrapped Up In Ourselves

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.

[love] Is The Type Of Disease That Spares Neither The Intelligent Nor The Idiotic.

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

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

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

Should I Kill Myself, Or Have A Cup Of Coffee?

For The First Time In A Long Time I Thought About Maman. I Felt As If I Understood Why At The End Of Her Life She Had Taken A 'fiancé,' Why She Had Played At Beginning Again. Even There, In That Home Where Lives Were Fading Out, Evening Was A Kind Of Wistful Respite. So Close To Death, Maman Must Have Felt Free Then And Ready To Live It All Again. Nobody, Nobody Had The Right To Cry Over Her. And I Felt Ready To Live It All Again Too.

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.

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

…. 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.

When One Has Extensively Pondered About Men, As A Career Or As A Vocation, One Sometimes Feels Nostalgic For Primates. At Least They Do Not Have Ulterior Motives.

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.

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

Beginning To Think Is Beginning To Be Undermined.

...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.

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

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.

Fate Is Not In Man But Around Him

The Soul Of A Murderer Is Blind

No Ends, Simply Means.

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

What More Ghastly Image Can Be Called Up Than That Of A Man Betrayed By His Body Who, Simply Because He Did Not Die In Time, Lives Out The Comedy While Awaiting The End, Face To Face With That God He Does Not Adore, Serving Him As He Served Life, Kneeling Before A Void And Arms Outstretched Toward A Heaven Without Eloquence That He Knows To Be Also Without Depth?

Our Civilization Survives In The Complacency Of Cowardly Or Malignant Minds -- A Sacrifice To The Vanity Of Aging Adolescents

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

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

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

Experience Yourself

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

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

Forever I Shall Be A Stranger To Myself. In Psychology As In Logic, There Are Truths But No Truth.

It Is The Job Of Thinking People Not To Be On The Side Of The Executioners.

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

Finally, And Most Of All, Words Failed Him.

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.

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.

Judging Whether Life Is Or Is Not Worth Living Amounts To Answering The Fundamental Question Of Philosophy.

We Are Not Certain, We Are Never Certain.

There Is No Shame In Preferring Happiness.

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

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.

Holland Is A Dream, Monsieur, A Dream Of Gold And Smoke-smokier By Day, More Gilded By Night. And Night And Day That Dream Is Peopled With Lohengrins Like These, Dreamily Riding Their Black Bicycles With High Handle-bars, Funereal Swans Constantly Drifting Throughout The Whole Country, Around The Seas, Along The Canals.

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