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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.

-Albert Camus

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Many Fledgling Moralists In

Albert Camus

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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.

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

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

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.

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

All I Know Of Morality I Learned From Football

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 Don't Want To Be A Genius-i Have Enough Problems Just Trying To Be A Man.

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

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

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

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

The Soul Of A Murderer Is Blind

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

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

Finally, And Most Of All, Words Failed Him.

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

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

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

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.

In Order To Understand The World, One Has To Turn Away From It On Occasion; In Order To Serve Others Better, One Has To Hold Them At A Distance For A Time. But Where Can One Find The Solitude Necessary To Vigor, The Deep Breath In Which The Mind Collects Itself And Courage Gauges Its Strength? There Remain Big Cities.

The World Is Unimportant And Whoever Recognizes This Conquers His Liberty.

Beauty, No Doubt, Does Not Make Revolutions. But A Day Will Come When Revolutions Will Have Need Of Beauty.

Everything Is True, And Nothing Is True!

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

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

There Can Be No Question Of Masking The Evidence, Of Suppressing The Absurd By Denying One Of The Terms Of Its Equation. It Is Essential To Know Whether One Can Live With It Or Whether, On The Other Hand, Logic Commands One To Die Of It.

To Those Who Despair Of Everything Reason Cannot Provide A Faith, But Only Passion, And In This Case It Must Be The Same Passion That Lay At The Root Of The Despair, Namely Humiliation And Hatred.

Mon Cher Ami, Let's Not Give Them Any Pretext, No Matter How Small, For Judging Us!!! Otherwise, We'll Be Left In Shreds. We Are Forced To Take The Same Precautions As The Animal Trainer. If, Before Going Into The Cage, He Has The Misfortune To Cut Himself While Shaving, What A Feast For The Wild Animals!!

Integrity Has No Need Of Rules.

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.

The Act Of Love Is A Confession.

I Said That The World Is Absurd, But I Was Too Hasty. This World In Itself Is Not Reasonable, That Is All That Can Be Said. But What Is Absurd Is The Confrontation Of This Irrational And The Wild Longing For Clarity Whose Call Echoes In The Human Heart.

Absurdity Of Life

The Only Way Out [of International Dictatorship] Is To Place International Law Above Governments, Which Means [...] That There Must Be A Parliament For Making It, And That Parliament Must Be Constituted By Means Of Worldwide Elections In Which All Nations Will Take Part.

Ah, Mon Cher, For Anyone Who Is Alone, Without God And Without A Master, The Weight Of Days Is Dreadful.

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

Great Feelings Take With Them Their Own Universe, Splendid Or Abject. They Light Up With Their Passion An Exclusive World In Which They Recognize Their Climate.

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.

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

And I Too, Felt Ready To Start Life All Over Again. It Was As If That Great Rush Of Anger Had Washed Me Clean, Emptied Me Of Hope, And, Gazing Up At The Dark Sky Spangled With Its Signs And Stars, For The First Time, The First, I Laid My Heart Open To The Benign Indifference Of The Universe.

To Govern Means To Pillage, As Everyone Knows.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We Are Not Certain, We Are Never Certain.

Everything Considered, A Determined Soul Will Always Manage.

When I Look At My Life And Its Secret Colors, I Feel Like Bursting Into Tears.

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

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.

The Welfare Of The People In Particular Has Always Been The Alibi Of Tyrants.

When Silence Or Tricks Of Language Contribute To Maintaining An Abuse That Must Be Reformed Or A Suffering That Can Be Relieved, Then There Is No Other Solution But To Speak Out And Show The Obscenity Hidden Under The Verbal Cloak.

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

There Are People Who Vindicate The World, Who Help Others Live Just By Their Presence.

The Absurd Is Lucid Reason Noting Its Limits.

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

Your Success And Happiness Are Forgiven You Only If You Generously Consent To Share Them. But To Be Happy It Is Essential Not To Be Too Concerned With Others. Consequently, There Is No Escape. Happy And Judged, Or Absolved And Wretched.

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.

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

An Intellectual Is Someone Whose Mind Watches Itself.

If The Descent Is Thus Sometimes Performed In Sorrow, It Can Also Take Place In Joy.

Ironic Philosophies Produce Passionate Works.

On The Ridge Where The Great Artist Moves Forward, Every Step Is An Adventure, An Extreme Risk. In That Risk, However, And Only There, Lays The Freedom Of Art.

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.

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

What’s True Of All The Evils In The World Is True Of Plague As Well. It Helps Men To Rise Above Themselves.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Absolute Freedom Mocks At Justice. Absolute Justice Denies Freedom.

I Do Not Believe In God And I Am Not An Atheist.

... 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.

Liberty Is Dangerous.

The Poor Man Whom Everyone Speaks Of, The Poor Man Whom Everyone Pities, One Of The Repulsive Poor From Whom Charitable Souls Keep Their Distance, He Has Still Said Nothing. Or, Rather, He Has Spoken Through The Voice Of Victor Hugo, Zola, Richepin. At Least, They Said So. And These Shameful Impostures Fed Their Authors. Cruel Irony, The Poor Man Tormented With Hunger Feeds Those Who Plead His Case.

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

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

Without Freedom There Is No Art.

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

One Grows Out Of Pity When It's Useless.

A Fate Is Not A Punishment.

I Have No Friends, I Only Have Accomplices Now. On The Other Hand, My Accomplices Are More Numerous Than My Friends: They Are The Human Race.

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

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

In Short, They Were Gambling On Their Luck, And Luck Is Not To Be Coerced.

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.

To Grow Old Is To Pass From Passion To Compassion.

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

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

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.

Nothing Is More Despicable Than Respect Based On Fear.

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.

Yes, And When The Love Of Life Disappears, No Meaning Can Console Us.

Each Generation Doubtless Feels Called Upon To Reform The World. Mine Knows That It Will Not Reform It, But Its Task Is Perhaps Even Greater. It Consists In Preventing The World From Destroying Itself.

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

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.

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

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

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.

For The Existentials, Negation Is Their God. To Be Precise, That God Is Maintained Only Through The Negation Of Human Reason. But, Like Suicides, Gods Change With Men.

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

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.

The World Expects Of Christians That They Will Raise Their Voices So Loudly And Clearly And So Formulate Their Protest That Not Even The Simplest Man Can Have The Slightest Doubt About What They Are Saying. Further, The World Expects Of Christians That They Will Eschew All Fuzzy Abstractions And Plant Themselves Squarely In Front Of The Bloody Face Of History. We Stand In Need Of Folk Who Have Determined To Speak Directly And Unmistakably And Come What May, To Stand By What They Have Said.

All Healthy Men Have Thought Of Their Own Suicide

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.

There Is No Love Of Life Without Despair Of Life.

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

The Mistake That Men Make Is That They Do Not Believe In Theater. Otherwise, They Would Know That Every Man Is Allowed To Play Thecelestial Tragedies And To Become God. All He Has To Do Is Harden His Heart.

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.

Don't Let Them Tell Us Stories.

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

Decisions You Make

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

The More I Produce, The Less I Am Certain. On The Road Along Which The Artist Walks, Night Falls Ever More Densely. Finally, He Dies Blind.

The Role Of The Intellectual Cannot Be To Excuse The Violence Of One Side And Condemn That Of The Other.

This World, Such As It Is, Is Not Tolerable. Therefore I Need The Moon, Or Happiness, Or Immortality, I Need Something Which Is Perhaps Demented, But Which Is Not Of This World.

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

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.

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.

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

The Spirit Of Rebellion Can Only Exist In A Society Where A Theoretical Equality Conceals Great Factual Inequalities. The Problem Of Rebellion, Therefore, Has No Meaning Except Within Our Own Western Society.

A Loveless World Is A Dead World.

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

At Any Street Corner The Feeling Of Absurdity Can Strike Any Man In The Face.

I Know Myself Too Well To Believe In Pure Virtue.

Absolute Virtue Is Impossible And The Republic Of Forgiveness Leads, With Implacable Logic, To The Republic Of The Guillotine.

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

A Stranger To Myself And To The World, Armed Solely With A Thought That Negates Itself As Soon As It Asserts, What Is This Condition In Which I Can Have Peace Only By Refusing To Know And To Live, In Which The Appetite For Conquest Bumps Into Walls That Defy Its Assaults?

But All The Long Speeches, All The Interminable Days And Hours That People Had Spent Talking About My Soul, Had Left Me With The Impression Of A Colorless Swirling River That Was Making Me Dizzy.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Thinking Is Learning All Over Again How To See, Directing One's Consciousness, Making Of Every Image A Privileged Place.

Purely Historical Thought Is Therefore Nihilistic: It Wholeheartedly Accepts The Evil Of History And In This Way Is Opposed To Rebellion.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Every Writer, Big Or Small, Needs To Say Or Write That The Genius Is Always Hissed At By His Contemporaries. Naturally, This Is Not True, It Happens Only Occasionally And Often By Chance. But This Need Within The Writer Is Enlightening.

But - I Cannot Make A Choice. I Have My Own Sorrow, But I Suffer With Him, Too; I Share His Pain. I Understand All - That Is My Trouble.

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

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

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.

With Rebellion, Awareness Is Born

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

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.

I Felt As I Hadn't Felt For Ages. I Had A Foolish Desire To Burst Into Tears. For The First Time I'd Realized How All These People Loathed Me.

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

...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.

Sometimes At Night I Would Sleep Open-eyed Underneath A Sky Dripping With Stars. I Was Alive Then.

Having Money Is A Way Of Being Free Of Money.

He Had Been Bored, That's All, Bored Like Most People. Hence He Had Made Himself Out Of Whole Cloth A Life Full Of Complications And Drama. Something Must Happen - And That Explains Most Human Commitments. Something Must Happen, Even Loveless Slavery, Even War Or Death. Hurray Then For Funerals!

But Perhaps We Should Love What We Cannot Understand

Do You Believe In God, Doctor?" No - But What Does That Really Mean? I'm Fumbling In The Dark, Struggling To Make Something Out. But I've Long Ceased Finding That Original.

A Man Is More A Man Through The Things He Keeps To Himself Than Through Those He Says.

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

People Hasten To Judge In Order Not To Be Judged Themselves.

And Indeed It Could Be Said That Once The Faintest Stirring Of Hope Became Possible, The Dominion Of Plague Was Ended.

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

All Great Deeds And All Great Thoughts Have A Ridiculous Beginning. Great Works Are Often Born On A Street Corner Or In A Restaurant's Revolving Door.

There Are Causes Worth Dying For, But None Worth Killing For.

This Divorce Between Man And His Life, The Actor And His Setting, Is Properly The Feeling Of Absurdity.

Absurdity Of Life

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.

We Used To Wonder Where War Lived, What It Was That Made It So Vile. And Now We Realize That We Know Where It Lives... Inside Ourselves.

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

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.

After All, Every Murderer When He Kills Runs The Risk Of The Most Dreadful Of Deaths, Whereas Those Who Kill Him Risk Nothing Except Promotion.

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.

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.

Find Your Happiness In Yourself.

Healthy People Have A Natural Skill Of Avoiding Feverish Eyes.

Old Married People Look So Much Alike That They Have The Same Number Of Hairs In Their Ears.

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

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

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.

If Man Is Reduced To Being Nothing But A Character In History, He Has No Other Choice But To Subside Into The Sound And Fury Of Acompletely Irrational History Or To Endow History With The Form Of Human Reason.

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

No Longer Were There Individual Destinies; Only A Collective Destiny, Made Of Plague And Emotions Shared By All.

Life Can Be Magnificent And Overwhelming -- That Is The Whole Tragedy. Without Beauty, Love, Or Danger It Would Almost Be Easy To Live.

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

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.

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

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.

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