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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.

-Albert Camus

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If The Only Significant

Albert Camus

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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.

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Myth Of Sisyphus

More From Albert Camus

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

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

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

Some Are Created To Love, While The Others - To Live.

In Holland, Everyone Is An Expert In Painting And In Tulips.

Truly Fertile Music, The Only Kind That Will Move Us, That We Shall Truly Appreciate, Will Be A Music Conducive To Dream, Which Banishes All Reason And Analysis. One Must Not Wish First To Understand And Then To Feel. Art Does Not Tolerate Reason.

... 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.

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

You Cannot Create Experience. You Must Undergo It.

We All Have A Weakness For Beauty.

Without Work All Life Goes Rotten.

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

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

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.

Beginning To Think Is Beginning To Be Undermined.

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.

Men Who Have Greatness Within Them Don't Go In For Politics.

A Régime [nazism] Which Invented A Biological Foreign Policy Was Obviously Acting Against Its Own Best Interests. But At Least It Obeyed Its Own Particular Logic.

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

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?

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

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

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

My Dear Friend, We Mustn't Give Them Even The Slightest Excuse To Judge Us! Otherwise, We End Up In Pieces.

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

Meaning Of Life

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

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

No Ends, Simply Means.

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

Empires And Churches Are Born Under The Sun Of Death.

Truth Is Mysterious, Elusive, Always To Be Conquered. Liberty Is Dangerous, As Hard To Live With As It Is Elating. We Must March Toward These Two Goals, Painfully But Resolutely, Certain In Advance Of Our Failings On So Long A Road.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

All Systems Of Morality Are Based On The Idea That An Action Has Consequences That Legitimize Or Cancel It. A Mind Imbued With The Absurd Merely Judges That Those Consequences Must Be Considered Calmly.

Actions Have Consequences

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

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

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.

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

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

I Realized People Would Soon Forget Me Once I Was Dead. I Couldn't Even Say That This Was Hard To Stomach; Really, There's No Idea To Which One Doesn't Get Acclimatized In Time.

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

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

The Innocent Is The Person Who Explains Nothing

Great Novelists Are Philosopher Novelists - That Is, The Contrary Of Thesis-writers.

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.

Women Are All We Know Of Paradise On This Earth.

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 Continue To Believe That This World Has No Ultimate Meaning. But I Know That Something In It Has A Meaning And That Is Man, Because He Is The Only Creature To Insist On Having One

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

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?

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

The Most Eloquent Eulogy Of Capitalism Was Made By Its Greatest Enemy. Marx Is Only Anti-capitalist In So Far As Capitalism Is Out Of Date.

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

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

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.

Analysis Of Rebellion Leads At Least To The Suspicion That, Contrary To The Postulates Of Contemporary Thought, A Human Nature Does Exist, As The Greeks Believed. Why Rebel If There Is Nothing Permanent In Oneself Worth Preserving? ... Rebellion, Though Apparently Negative, Since It Creates Nothing, Is Profoundly Positive In That It Reveals The Part Of Man Which Must Always Be Defended.

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.

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

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

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.

One Of The Only Coherent Philosophical Positions Is Thus Revolt. It Is A Constant Confrontation Between Man And His Own Obscurity.

... Unhappiness Is Like Marriage. We Believe We Chose It, But Then It Is Choosing Us. That Is How It Is, We Can Do Nothing About 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.

With Rebellion, Awareness Is Born

Greatness Consists In Trying To Be Great. There Is No Other Way.

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.

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.

A Loveless World Is A Dead World.

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

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

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.

Maman Used To Say That You Can Always Find Something To Be Happy About.

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.

True Artists Scorn Nothing.

By Giving Too Much Importance To Fine Actions One May End By Paying An Indirect But Powerful Tribute To Evil, Because In So Doing One Implies That Such Fine Actions Are Only Valuable Because They Are Rare, And That Malice Or Indifference Are Far More Common Motives In The Actions Of Men.

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

So All A Man Could Win In The Conflict Between Plague And Life Was Knowledge And Memories.

To Feel Absolutely Right Is The Beginning Of The End.

Integrity Has No Need Of Rules.

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

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.

One Always Has Exaggerated Ideas About What One Doesn't Know.

Have Pity, Lord, On Those Who Love And Are Separated.

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.

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

Je Puis Nier Une Chose Sans Me Croire Obligé De La Salir Ou De Retirer Aux Autres Le Droit D'y Croire.

Truth Is Not A Virtue, But A Passion. It Is Never Charitable.

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

Great Ideas Come Into The World As Gently As Doves.

It Is Not The World That Is Absurd, Nor Human Thought: The Absurd Arises When The Human Need To Understand Meets The Unreasonableness Of The World, When 'my Appetite For The Absolute And For Unity' Meets 'the Impossibility Of Reducing This World To A Rational And Reasonable Principle.'

Whoever Gives Nothing, Has Nothing. The Greatest Misfortune Is Not To Be Unloved, But Not To Love.

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

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

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

How Hard It Is, How Bitter It Is To Become A Man!

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.

At The Heart Of All Beauty Lies Something Inhuman.

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.

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

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

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.

The Urge To Revolt Is One Of The Essential Dimensions Of Human Nature.

In Order To Exist, Man Must Rebel, But Rebellion Must Respect The Limits That It Discovers In Itself - Limits Where Minds Meet, And In Meeting, Begin To Exist.

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

I Feel Like Getting Married, Or Committing Suicide, Or Subscribing To L'illustration. Something Desperate, You Know.

Revolt And Revolution Both Wind Up At The Same Crossroads: The Police, Or Folly.

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

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

The Day When I Am No More Than A Writer I Shall Cease To Be A Writer.

Whereas The Greeks Gave To Will The Boundaries Of Reason, We Have Come To Put The Will's Impulse In The Very Center Of Reason, Which Has, As A Result, Become Deadly.

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

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

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

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

To Insure The Adoration Of A Theorem For Any Length Of Time, Faith Is Not Enough, A Police Force Is Needed As Well.

Law Enforcement

But What Are A Hundred Million Deaths? When One Has Served In A War, One Hardly Knows What A Dead Man Is, After A While. And Since A Dead Man Has No Substance Unless One Has Actually Seen Him Dead, A Hundred Million Corpses Broadcast Through History Are No More Than A Puff Of Smoke In The Imagination.

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.

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.

The Contradiction Is This: Man Rejects The World As It Is, Without Accepting The Necessity Of Escaping It. In Fact, Men Cling To The World And By Far The Majority Do Not Want To Abandon It.

In The End, We Would Like Not To Be Guilty While At The Same Time Being Dispensed Of The Effort Of Purifying Ourselves. Not Enough Cynicism And Not Enough Virtue.

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

On My Way Out I Was Even Going To Shake His Hand, But I Remembered Just In Time That I'd Killed A Man.

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.

L'absurde Est La Notion Essentielle Et La Premie' Re Ve? Rite? . The Absurd Is The Fundamental Idea And The First Truth.

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 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.

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

But What Does It Mean, The Plague? It's Life, That's All.

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

To Me, Art Is Not A Solitary Delight. It Is A Means Of Stirring The Greatest Number Of Men By Providing Them With A Privileged Image Of Our Common Joys And Woes.

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.

Does The End Justify The Means? That Is Possible. But What Will Justify The End? To That Question, Which Historical Thought Leaves Pending, Rebellion Replies: The Means.

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

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.

Ah! My Friend, For Whomever Is Alone, Without A God And Without A Master, The Weight Of Time Is Terrible. One Must Then Choose A Master, God Being Out Of Style.

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.

When The Throne Of God Is Overturned, The Rebel Realizes That It Is Now His Own Responsibility To Create The Justice, Order, And Unity That He Sought In Vain Within His Own Condition, And In This Way To Justify The Fall Of God. Then Begins The Desperate Effort To Create, At The Price Of Crime And Murder If Necessary, The Dominion Of Man.

I Feel More Fellowship With The Defeated Than With Saints.

You Must Have A Love, A Great Love, To Ensure An Alibi At Unjustified Despairs That Conquer All Of Us

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

There Is The Good And The Bad, The Great And The Low, The Just And The Unjust. I Swear To You That All That Will Never Change.

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.

I Can Negate Everything Of That Part Of Me That Lives On Vague Nostalgias, Except This Desire For Unity, This Longing To Solve, This Need For Clarity And Cohesion. I Can Refute Everything In This World Surrounding Me That Offends Or Enraptures Me, Except This Chaos, This Sovereign Chance And This Divine Equivalence Which Springs From Anarchy. I Don't Know Whether This World Has Meaning That Transcends It. But I Know That I Do Not Know That Meaning And That It Is Impossible For Me Just Now To Know It. What Can A Meaning Outside My Condition Mean To Me? I Can Understand Only In Human Terms.

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

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.

It Is Better For The Intellectual Not To Talk All The Time. To Begin With, It Would Exhaust Him, And, Above All, It Would Keep Him From Thinking. He Must Create If He Can, First And Foremost, Especially If His Creation Does Not Side-step The Problems Of His Time.

I Used To Advertise My Loyalty And I Don't Believe There Is A Single Person I Loved That I Didn't Eventually Betray.

Conscious Of Not Being Able To Separate Myself From My Time, I Have Decided To Become Part Of It.

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

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.

There Are People Who Prefer To Look Their Fate In The Eye

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

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

Happiness And 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?

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

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

Who Taught You All This, Doctor?" The Reply Came Promptly: "suffering.

Life Is The Sum Of Your Choices.

It Is Not Rebellion Itself Which Is Noble But The Demands It Makes Upon Us.

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

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

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.

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

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

We're All Special Cases.

Knowing What [christ] Knew , Knowing All About Mankind--ah! Who Would Have Thought That The Crime Is Not So Much To Make Others Die, But To Die Oneself--confronted Day And Night With His Innocent Crime, It Became Too Difficult To Go On. It Was Better To Get It Over With, To Not Defend Himself, To Die, In Order Not To Be The Only One To Have Survived, And To Go Elsewhere, Where, Perhaps, He Would Be Supported.

There Is No Shame In Preferring Happiness.

One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy.

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.

The Future Is The Only Transcendental Value For Men Without God.

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.

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

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

Powerful, Yes, That Is The Word That I Constantly Rolled On My Tongue, I Dreamed Of Absolute Power, The Kind That Forces Others Tokneel, That Forces The Enemy To Capitulate, Finally Converting Him, And The More The Enemy Is Blind, Cruel, Sure Of Himself, Buried In His Conviction, The More His Admission Proclaims The Royalty Of He Who Has Brought On His Defeat.

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

For Years I've Wanted To Live According To Everyone Else's Morals. I've Forced Myself To Live Like Everyone Else, To Look Like Everyone Else. I Said What Was Necessary To Join Together, Even When I Felt Separate. And After All Of This, Catastrophe Came. Now I Wander Amid The Debris, I Am Lawless, Torn To Pieces, Alone And Accepting To Be So, Resigned To My Singularity And To My Infirmities. And I Must Rebuild A Truth-after Having Lived All My Life In A Sort Of Lie.

I Had Been Right I Was Still Right I Was Always Right. I Had Lived My Life One Way And I Could Just As Well Lived It Another. I Had Done This And I Hadn T Done That. I Hadn T Done This Thing And I Had Done Another. And So?

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

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.

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

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.

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.

A Trial Cannot Be Conducted By Announcing The General Culpability Of A Civilization. Only The Actual Deeds Which, At Least, Stank In The Nostrils Of The Entire World Were Brought To Judgment.

Integrity Needs No Rules.

Men Die And They Are Not Happy.

Proof Is Never Definitive, After All; One Has To Begin Again With Each New Person.

Beware Of Those Who Say: "i Know This Too Well To Be Able To Express It." For If They Cannot Do So, This Is Because They Don't Know It Or Because Out Of Laziness They Stopped At The Outer Crust.

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 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.

The Real Passion Of The Twentieth Century Is Servitude.

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.

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

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