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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!!

-Albert Camus

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Mon Cher Ami, Let's

Albert Camus

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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!!

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

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The Principle Can Be Established That For A Man Who Does Not Cheat What He Believes To Be True Must Determine His Actions.

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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.

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Without Freedom There Is No Art.

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

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Independence Is Earned By A Few Words Of Cheap Confidence

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The Human Heart Has A Tiresome Tendency To Label As Fate Only What Crushes It. But Happiness Likewise, In Its Way, Is Without Reason, Since It Is Inevitable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

I Knew A Pure Heart Who Refused Tot Be Mistrustful.... He Had Written At His Doorstep: "from Wherever You Are, Enter And Be Welcome". Who Do You Think Responded To This Lovely Invitation? The Militia, Who Made Themselves At Home And Gutted Him.

... 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.

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

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.

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

Once One's Up Against It, The Precise Manner Of One's Death Has Obviously Small Importance.

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.

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

Every Man, And For Stronger Reasons, Every Artist, Wants To Be Recognized. So Do I.

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

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

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

I Enjoyed My Own Nature To The Fullest, And We All Know There Lies Happiness, Although, To Soothe One Another Mutually, We Occasionally Pretend To Condemn Such Joys As Selfishness.

Men Are Never Really Willing To Die Except For The Sake Of Freedom: Therefore They Do Not Believe In Dying Completely.

No Code Of Ethics And No Effort Are Justifiable A Priori In The Face Of The Cruel Mathematics That Command Our Condition.

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.

History Has Shown That The Less People Read, The More Books They Buy.

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.

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.

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

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".

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.

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

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

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

If Those Whom We Begin To Love Could Know Us As We Were Before Meeting Them They Could Perceive What They Have Made Of Us.

Happiness And Love

We Have Art In Order Not To Die Of Life.

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.

After All Manner Of Professors Have Done Their Best For Us, The Place We Are To Get Knowledge Is In Books. The True University Of These Days Is A Collection Of Books.

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.

Politics And The Fate Of Mankind Are Formed By Men Without Ideals And Without Greatness. Those Who Have Greatness Within Them Do Not Go In For Politics.

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

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!

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

They Knew Now That If There Is One Thing One Can Always Yearn For, And Sometimes Attain, It Is Human Love.

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.

The Realization That Life Is Absurd And Cannot Be An End, But Only A Beginning. This Is A Truth Nearly All Great Minds Have Taken As Their Starting Point. It Is Not This Discovery That Is Interesting, But Theconsequences And Rules Of Action Drawn From It.

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.

In Art, Rebellion Is Consummated And Perpetuated In The Act Of Real Creation, Not In Criticism Or Commentary.

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

What Doesn't Kill You Make You Stronger And Stronger

Makes You Stronger

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

Find Your Happiness In Yourself.

No Matter How The Sun Shone, The Sea Held Forth No More Promises.

Integrity Has No Need Of Rules.

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.

Always Go Too Far, Because That's Where You'll Find The Truth

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.

We All Have A Weakness For Beauty.

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

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

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.

Europe Has Lived On Its Contradictions, Flourished On Its Differences, And, Constantly Transcending Itself Thereby, Has Created A Civilization On Which The Whole World Depends Even When Rejecting It. This Is Why I Do Not Believe In A Europe Unified Under The Weight Of An Ideology Or Of A Technocracy That Overlooked These Differences.

I Have Always Felt I Lived On The High Seas, Threatened, At The Heart Of A Royal Happiness.

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

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

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 Truth Is That Everyone Is Bored, And Devotes Himself To Cultivating Habits.

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

To Abandon Oneself To Principles Is Really To Die - And To Die For An Impossible Love Which Is The Contrary Of Love.

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.

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

Note, Besides, That It Is No More Immoral To Directly Rob Citizens Than To Slip Indirect Taxes Into The Price Of Goods That They Cannot Do Without.

Travel, Which Is Like A Greater And A Graver Science, Brings Us Back To Ourselves.

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?

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

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

We Are All Exceptional Cases. We All Want To Appeal Against Something! Each Of Us Insists On Being Innocent At All Cost, Even If He Has To Accuse The Whole Human Race And Heaven Itself.

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

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

Don't Believe Your Friends When They Ask You To Be Honest With Them. All They Really Want Is To Be Maintained In The Good Opinion They Have Of Themselves.

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

No Excuses Ever, For Anyone; That Is My Principle At The Outset. I Deny The Good Intention, The Respectable Mistake, The Indiscretion, The Extenuating Circumstance. With Me There Is No Giving Of Absolution Or Blessing.

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

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

The Real Passion Of The Twentieth Century Is Servitude.

Violence Is Both Unavoidable And Unjustifiable.

I Would Rather Not Have Upset Him, But I Couldn't See Any Reason To Change My Life. Looking Back On It, I Wasn't Unhappy. When I Was A Student, I Had Lots Of Ambitions Like That. But When I Had To Give Up My Studies I Learned Very Quickly That None Of It Really Mattered.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

To Feel Absolutely Right Is The Beginning Of The End.

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

Crime Too Is A Form Of Solitude, Even If One Thousand Get Together To Commit It. And It Is Right For Me To Die Alone, After Having Lived And Killed Alone.

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