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On The Whole, Men Are More Good Than Bad; That, However, Isn't The Real Point. But They Are More Or Less Ignorant, And It Is This That We Call Vice Or Virtue; The Most Incorrigible Vice Being That Of An Ignorance That Fancies It Knows Everything And Therefore Claims For Itself The Right To Kill. The Soul Of The Murderer Is Blind; And There Can Be No True Goodness Nor True Love Without The Utmost Clear-sightedness.

-Albert Camus

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On The Whole, Men

Albert Camus

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On The Whole, Men Are More Good Than Bad; That, However, Isn't The Real Point. But They Are More Or Less Ignorant, And It Is This That We Call Vice Or Virtue; The Most Incorrigible Vice Being That Of An Ignorance That Fancies It Knows Everything And Therefore Claims For Itself The Right To Kill. The Soul Of The Murderer Is Blind; And There Can Be No True Goodness Nor True Love Without The Utmost Clear-sightedness.

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Any Country Where I Am Not Bored Is A Country That Teaches Me Nothing.

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

Only The Sea, Murmurous Behind The Dingy Checkerboard Of Houses, Told Of The Unrest, The Precariousness, Of All Things In This World.

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?

Empires And Churches Are Born Under The Sun Of Death.

Artistic Creation Is A Demand For Unity And A Rejection Of The World.

Artistic Creation

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.

Although It Was The Middle Of Winter, I Finally Realized That, Within Me, Summer Was Inextinguishable.

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

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

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

Men Are Convinced Of Your Arguments, Your Sincerity, And The Seriousness Of Your Efforts Only By Your Death.

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

There Is Not A Single True Work Of Art That Has Not In The End Added To The Inner Freedom Insight And Life Of Each Person Who Has Known And Loved It.

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

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

Men Die And They Are Not Happy.

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

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.

Give Up The Tyranny Of Female Charm.

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

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

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.

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

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

Intelligence In Chains Loses In Lucidity What It Gains In Intensity.

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.

All Healthy Men Have Thought Of Their Own Suicide

...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.

His Own Faith, However, Was Not Lacking In Virtues Since It Consisted In Acknowledging Obscurely That He Would Be Granted Much Without Ever Deserving Anything.

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

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

Common Knowledge

What Is A Rebel? A Man Who Says No.

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

Every Act Of Rebellion Expresses A Nostalgia For Innocence And An Appeal To The Essence Of Being.

Democracy Is Not The Law Of The Majority But The Protection Of The Minority.

Peace Is The Only Battle Worth Waging.

That Must Be Wonderful; I Have No Idea Of What It Means.

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

Morality, When Formal, Devours.

People Don't Love Each Other At Our Age, Marthe—they Please Each Other, That's All. Later On, When You're Old And Impotent, You Can Love Someone. At Our Age, You Just Think You Do. That's All It Is.

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

Every Great Work Makes The Human Face More Admirable And Richer, And This Is Its Whole Secret.

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

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

That's Love, Giving Everything, Sacrificing All Without Hope Of Return.

You Always Get Exaggerated Notions Of Things You Don't Know Anything About.

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

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.

Men And Women Consume One Another Rapidly In What Is Called "the Act Of Love," Or Else Settle Down To A Mild Habit Of Conjugality. We Seldom Find A Mean Between These Two Extremes.

Those Who Lack The Courage Will Always Find A Philosophy To Justify It.

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

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

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

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!!'

Healthy People Have A Natural Skill Of Avoiding Feverish Eyes.

Truth, Like Light Is Dazzling. By Contrast, Untruth Is A Beautiful Sunset That Enhances Everything.

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.

At Times I Feel Myself Overtaken By An Immense Tenderness For These People Around Me Who Live In The Same Century.

Happiness And Love

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.

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.

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

Some People Talk In Their Sleep. Lecturers Talk While Other People Sleep.

For Ever, I Shall Be A Stranger To Myself.

In A World That Has Ceased To Believe In Sin, The Artist Is Responsible For The Preaching.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

[paris] Is Dirty. It Has Pigeons And Black Yards. The People Have White Skin.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Over There, In Europe, All Was Shame And Anger. Here It Was Exile Or Solitude, Among These Languid And Agitated Madmen Who Danced In Order To Die.

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.

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

An Intellectual? Yes. And Never Deny It. An Intellectual Is Someone Whose Mind Watches Itself. I Like This, Because I Am Happy To Be Both Halves, The Watcher And The Watched. "can They Be Brought Together?" This Is A Practical Question. We Must Get Down To It. "i Despise Intelligence" Really Means: "i Cannot Bear My Doubts.

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.

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

Poverty, First Of All Was Never A Misfortune For Me; It Was Radiant With Sunlight.. I Owe It To My Family, First Of All, Who Lacked Everything And Who Envied Practically Nothing.

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

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

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

For If I Try To Seize This Self Of Which I Feel Sure, If I Try To Define And To Summarize It, It Is Nothing But Water Slipping Through My Fingers.

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

I Have No Idea What's Awaiting Me, Or What Will Happen When This All Ends. For The Moment I Know This: There Are Sick People And They Need Curing.

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

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

We Are Not Certain, We Are Never Certain.

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.

There Is No Shame In Preferring Happiness.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Charm Is A Way Of Getting The Answer 'yes' Without Asking A Clear Question.

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

The Struggle Itself Towards The Heights Is Enough To Fill A Man's Heart. One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy.

On The Whole, Men Are More Good Than Bad; That, However, Isn't The Real Point. But They Are More Or Less Ignorant, And It Is This That We Call Vice Or Virtue; The Most Incorrigible Vice Being That Of An Ignorance That Fancies It Knows Everything And Therefore Claims For Itself The Right To Kill. The Soul Of The Murderer Is Blind; And There Can Be No True Goodness Nor True Love Without The Utmost Clear-sightedness.

All That Remains Is A Fate Whose Outcome Alone Is Fatal. Outside Of That Single Fatality Of Death, Everything, Joy Or Happiness, Is Liberty. A World Remains Of Which Man Is The Sole Master. What Bound Him Was The Illusion Of Another World. The Outcome Of His Thought, Ceasing To Be Renunciatory, Flowers In Images. It Frolics---in Myths, To Be Sure, But Myths With No Other Depth Than That Of Human Suffering And, Like It, Inexhaustible. Not The Divine Fable That Amuses And Blinds, But The Terrestrial Face, Gesture, And Drama In Which Are Summed Up A Difficult Wisdom And An Ephemeral Passion.

A Man Without Ethics Is A Wild Beast Loosed Upon This World.

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

It Would Be Unjust, And Moreover Utopian, For Shakespeare To Direct The Shoemakers' Union. But It Would Be Equally Disastrous Forthe Shoemakers' Union To Ignore Shakespeare.

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?

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

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?

All I Know Of Morality I Learned From Football

In The Past, The Poverty They Shared Had A Certain Sweetness About It. When The End Of The Day Came And They Would Eat Their Dinner In Silence With The Oil Lamp Between Them, There Was A Secret Joy In Such Simplicity, Such Retrenchment.

A Novel Is Never Anything But A Philosophy Expressed In Images. And In A Good Novel The Philosophy Has Disappeared Into The Images.

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.

An Intellectual Is Someone Whose Mind Watches Itself.

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

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

The Tragedy Is Not That We Are Alone, But That We Cannot Be. At Times I Would Give Anything In The World To No Longer Be Connected By Anything To This Universe Of Men.

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

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

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

Freedom Is Not A Reward Or A Decoration That You Toast In Champagne. On The Contrary, It's Hard Graft And A Long-distance Run, All Alone, Very Exhausting. Alone In A Dreary Room, Alone In The Dock Before The Judges, And Alone To Make Up Your Mind, Before Yourself And Before The Judgement Of Others. At The End Of Every Freedom There Is A Sentence, Which Is Why Freedom Is Too Heavy To Bear.

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.

It Takes Time To Live. Like Any Work Of Art, Life Needs To Be Thought About.

The Only Conception Of Freedom I Can Have Is That Of The Prisoner Or The Individual In The Midst Of The State. The Only One I Know Is Freedom Of Thought And Action.

We [raymond And Meursault] Stared At Each Other Without Blinking, And Everything Came To A Stop There Between The Sea, The Sand, And The Sun, And The Double Silence Of The Flute And The Water. It Was Then That I Realized That You Could Either Shoot Or Not Shoot.

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.

Those Who Write Clearly Have Readers.

Writers And Writing

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

The Four Conditions Of Happiness: Life In The Open Air, Love For Another Being,freedom From Ambition,creation

Everybody Knows That Pestilences Have A Way Of Recurring In The World; Yet Somehow We Find It Hard To Believe In Ones That Crash Down On Our Heads From A Blue Sky.

Accepting The Absurdity Of Everything Around Us Is One Step, A Necessary Experience: It Should Not Become A Dead End. It Arouses A Revolt That Can Become Fruitful

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Man Cannot Do Without Beauty, And This Is What Our Era Pretends To Want To Disregard.

In That Night Alive With Signs And Stars, I Opened Myself To The Gentle Indifference Of The World. Finding It So Much Like Myself--like A Brother, Really--i Felt That I Had Been Happy And That I Was Happy Again.

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.

Paneloux Is A Man Of Learning, A Scholar. He Hasn't Come In Contact With Death; That's Why He Can Speak With Such Assurance Of The Truth-with A Capital T. But Every Country Priest Who Visits His Parishioners And Has Heard A Man Gasping For Breath On His Deathbed Thinks As I Do. He'd Try To Relieve Human Suffering Before Trying To Point Out Its Goodness.

If The World Were Clear, Art Would Not Exist.

My Profession Lent Itself Nicely To My Vocation For Heights. It Freed Me Of Any Bitterness Towards My Fellow Men, Who Were Alwaysin My Debt, Without My Owing Them Anything. It Placed Me Above The Judge Whom, I In Turn Judged, Above The Defendant Whom I Forced Into Gratitude.

The Soul Of A Murderer Is Blind

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

Every Man Needs Slaves Like He Needs Clean Air. To Rule Is To Breathe, Is It Not? And Even The Most Disenfranchised Get To Breathe. The Lowest On The Social Scale Have Their Spouses Or Their Children.

Am Well. Thinking Of You Always. Love

Thinking Of You

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

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

The Innocent Is The Person Who Explains Nothing

After All, I Do Not Have So Many Ways Of Proving That I Am Free. We Is Always Free At The Expense Of Someone Else. It Is A Bother,but It Is Normal.

What Is Called A Reason For Living Is Also An Excellent Reason For Dying.

I Draw From The Absurd Three Consequences: My Revolt, My Liberty, My Passion.

Myths Are Made For The Imagination To Breath Life Into Them.

The Truth Is That Nothing Is Less Sensational Than Pestilence, And By Reason Of Their Very Duration Great Misfortunes Are Monotonous.

In Truth, I Was So Good At Being A Man, With Such Plenitude And Simplicity, That I Thought I Was Something Of A Superman.

A Loveless World Is A Dead World.

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.

What Is Human In Me Is Not What Is Best In Me. What Is Human In Me Is That I Desire, And To Obtain What I Desire, I Believe I Would Crush Anything That Stood In My Way.

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.

There Is But One Truly Serious Philosophical Problem And That Is Suicide. Judging Whether Life Is Or Is Not Worth Living Amounts To Answering The Fundamental Question Of Philosophy. All The Rest — Whether Or Not The World Has Three Dimensions, Whether The Mind Has Nine Or Twelve Categories — Comes Afterwards. These Are Games; One Must First Answer.

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

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.

Always There Comes An Hour When One Is Weary Of One's Work And Devotion To Duty, And All One Craves For Is A Loved Face, The Warmth And Wonder Of A Loving Heart.

There Is In Me An Anarchy And Frightful Disorder. Creating Makes Me Die A Thousand Deaths, Because It Means Making Order, And My Entire Being Rebels Against Order. But Without It I Would Die, Scattered To The Winds.

At The Heart Of All Beauty Lies Something Inhuman.

Thoughts Of Suicide Have Got Me Through Many A Bad Night.

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

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.

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

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

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

A Nihilist Is Not One Who Believes In Nothing , But One Who Does Not Believe In What Exists.

Existence Is Illusory And It Is Eternal.

The Current Motto For All Of Us Can Only Be This: Without Giving Up Anything On The Plane Of Justice, Yield Nothing On The Plane Of Freedom.

It Was Previously A Question Of Finding Out Whether Or Not Life Had To Have A Meaning To Be Lived. It Now Becomes Clear On The Contrary That It Will Be Lived All The Better If It Has No Meaning

Germany Collapsed As A Result Of Having Engaged In A Struggle For Empire With The Concepts Of Provincial Politics.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

There Exists An Obvious Fact That Seems Utterly Moral: Namely, That A Man Is Always Prey To His Truths. Once He Has Admitted Them, He Cannot Free Himself From Them. One Has To Pay Something. A Man Who Has Become Conscious Of The Absurd Is Forever Bound To It.

It Is Terrifying To See How Easily, In Certain People, All Dignity Collapses. Yet When You Think About It, This Is Quite Normal Since They Only Maintain This Dignity By Constantly Striving Against Their Own Nature.

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

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

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

I Am Too Far Away From What I Love And My Distance Is Without Remedy.

We Don't Have The Time To Completely Be Ourselves. We Only Have The Room To Be Happy.

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.

Like Great Works, Deep Feelings Always Mean More Than They Are Conscious Of Saying.

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

Experience Yourself

After All Perhaps The Greatness Of Art Lies In The Perpetual Tension Between Beauty And Pain, The Love Of Men And The Madness Of Creation, Unbearable Solitude And The Exhausting Crowd, Rejection And Consent.

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

Because There Is Nothing Here Than Invites Us To Cherish Unhappy Lovers. Nothing Is More Vain Than To Die For Love. What We Ought To Do Is Live.

One Dies If Necessary, One Breaks Rather Than Bending. But I Bend, Because I Continue To Love 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.

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