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

-Albert Camus

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One Dies If Necessary,

Albert Camus

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

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Without Work, All Life Goes Rotten. But When Work Is Soulless, Life Stifles And Dies.

There Is Merely Bad Luck In Not Being Loved; There Is Misfortune In Not Loving. All Of Us, Today, Are Dying Of This Misfortune. For Violence And Hatred Dry Up The Heart Itself; The Long Fight For Justice Exhausts The Love That Nevertheless Gave Birth To It.

The Need To Be Right Is The Sign Of A Vulgar Mind.

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

...any Authentic Creation Is A Gift To The Future.

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.

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.

Without Culture, And The Relative Freedom It Implies, Society, Even When Perfect, Is But A Jungle. This Is Why Any Authentic Creation Is A Gift To The Future.

Art And Culture

There Is No Frontier Between Being And Appearing.

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

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

When The Body Is Sad, The Heart Languishes.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

To Write Is To Become Disinterested. There Is A Certain Renunciation In Art.

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

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.

With Rebellion, Awareness Is Born

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

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.

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

“to Think The Way You Do,” He Said Smiling, “you Have To Be A Man Who Lives Either On A Tremendous Despair, Or On A Tremendous Hope.” “on Both, Perhaps.”

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

Independence Is Earned By A Few Words Of Cheap Confidence

Nothing Is More Despicable Than Respect Based On Fear.

The True Work Of Art Is Always On The Human Scale. It Is Essentially The One That Says, 'less.

Poor And Free Rather Than Rich And Enslaved. Of Course, Men Want To Be Both Rich And Free, And This Is What Leads Them At Times To Be Poor And Enslaved.

Every Stone Here Sweats With Suffering, I Know That. I Have Never Looked At Them Without A Feeling Of Anguish. But Deep In My Heart I Know That The Most Wretched Among You Have Seen A Divine Face Emerge From Their Darkness. That Is The Face You Are Asked To See.

Since The Order Of The World Is Shaped By Death, Mightn't It Be Better For God If We Refuse To Believe In Him, And Struggle With All Our Might Against Death Without Raising Our Eyes Towards The Heaven Where He Sits In Silence?

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.

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

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.

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

If Pimps And Thieves Everywhere Were Always Punished, Honest People Would All Believe Themselves Always To Be Innocent.

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.

Utopia Is That Which Is In Contradiction With Reality.

There Is No Shame In Preferring Happiness.

But Do You Know Why We Are Always More Just And Generous Toward The Dead? The Reason Is Simple. With Them There Is No Obligation. They Leave Us Free And We Can Take Our Time, Fit The Testimonial Between A Cocktail Party And A Nice Little Mistress, In Our Spare Time, In Short.

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

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.

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.

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.

Capital Punishment Is The Most Premeditated Of Murders.

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.

Thus I Progressed On The Surface Of Life, In The Realm Of Words As It Were, Never In Reality. All Those Books Barely Read, Those Friends Barely Loved, Those Cities Barely Visited, Those Women Barely Possessed! I Went Through The Gestures Out Of Boredom Or Absent-mindedness. Then Came Human Beings; They Wanted To Cling, But There Was Nothing To Cling To, And That Was Unfortunate--for Them. As For Me, I Forgot. I Never Remembered Anything But Myself.

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.

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

What Gives Value To Travel Is Fear. It Is A Fact That, At A Certain Moment, When We Are So Far From Our Own Country, We Are Seized By A Vague Fear And An Instinctive Desire To Go Back To The Protection Of Old Habits. I Look Upon It More As An Occasion For Testing.

Everybody Knows Life Isn't Worth Living.

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

Art Does Not Tolerate Reason.

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

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.

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

... 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.

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

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.

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

Basically, At The Very Bottom Of Life, Which Seduces Us All, There Is Only Absurdity, And More Absurdity. And Maybe That's What Gives Us Our Joy For Living, Because The Only Thing That Can Defeat Absurdity Is Lucidity.

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

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

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.

The Soul Of A Murderer Is Blind

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

Happiness And Love

What The World Expects Of Christians Is That Christians Should Speak Out, Loud And Clear... In Such A Way That Never A Doubt, Never The Slightest Doubt, Could Rise In The Heart Of The Simplest Man.

The Most Important Thing You Do Everyday You Live Is Deciding Not To Kill Yourself.

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

The Main Thing Is That Everything Become Simple, Easy Enough For A Child To Understand.

Integrity Needs No Rules.

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

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.

We Are Condemned To Live Together.

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

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.

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

Heroism Is Accessible. Happiness Is More Difficult.

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

It Happens That The Stage Sets Collapse. Rising, Streetcar, Four Hours In The Office Or The Factory, Meal, Streetcar, Four Hours Of Work, Meal, Sleep, And Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday And Saturday According To The Same Rhythm – This Path Is Easily Followed Most Of The Time. But One Day The “why” Arises And Everything Begins In That Weariness Tinged With Amazement.

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.

I Was Tormented By My Desire For A Woman ... I Thought So Much About A Woman, About Women, About All The Ones I Had Known, About All The Circumstances In Which I Had Enjoyed Them, That My Cell Would Be Filled With Their Faces And Crowded With My Desires.

Ah Cher Ami, How Poor In Invention Men Are! They Are They Always Think One Commits Suicide For A Reason. But It's Quite Possible To Commit Suicide For Two Reasons. No, That Never Occurs To Them. So What's The Good Of Dying Intentionally, Of Sacrificing Yourself To The Idea You Want People To Have Of You? Once You Are Dead, They Will Take Advantage Of It To Attribute Idiotic Or Vulgar Motives To Your Action. Martyrs, Cher Ami, Must Choose Between Being Forgotten, Mocked, Or Made Use Of. As For Being Understood--never!

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

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.

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

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".

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

Of Course, True Love Is Exceptional - Two Or Three Times A Century, More Or Less. The Rest Of The Time There Is Vanity Or Boredom.

Love Cannot Accept What It Is. Everywhere On Earth It Cries Out Against Kindness, Compassion, Intelligence, Everything That Leads To Compromise. Love Demands The Impossible, The Absolute, The Sky On Fire, Inexhaustible Springtime, Life After Death, And Death Itself Transfigured Into Eternal Life.

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

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.

Rebellion Cannot Exist Without The Feeling That Somewhere, In Some Way, You Are Justified.

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

No, Father, I've A Very Different Idea Of Love. And Until My Dying Day I Shall Refuse To Love A Scheme Of Things In Which Children Are Put To Torture.

Life Is Meaningless, But Worth Living, Provided You Recognize It's Meaningless.

Everyone Would Like To Behave Like A Pagan, With Everyone Else Behaving Like A Christian.

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

All I Maintain Is That On This Earth There Are Pestilences And There Are Victims, And It's Up To Us, So Far As Possible, Not To Join Forces With The Pestilences. That May Sound Simple To The Point Of Childishness; I Can't Judge If It's Simple, But I Know It's True.

And So I Learned That Familiar Paths Traced In The Dusk Of Summer Evenings May Lead As Well To Prison As To Innocent Untroubled Sleep.

There Is A Life And There Is A Death, And There Are Beauty And Melancholy Between.

Peace Is The Only Battle Worth Waging.

Do Not Wait For The Last Judgment. It Takes Place Every Day.

For Me, Physical Love Has Always Been Bound To An Irresistible Feeling Of Innocence And Joy. Thus, I Cannot Love In Tears But In Exaltation.

Happiness And Love

The Absurd Is Essentially A Divorce. It Lies In Neither Of The Elements Compared; It Is Born Of Their Confrontation.

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.

…there's No Question Of Heroism In All This. It's A Matter Of Common Decency. That's An Idea Which May Make Some People Smile, But The Only Means Of Fighting A Plague Is - Common Decency.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

A Person I Knew Used To Divide Human Beings Into Three Categories: Those Who Prefer To Have Nothing To Hide Rather Than Being Obliged To Lie, Those Who Prefer Lying To Having Nothing To Hide, And Finally Those Who Like Both Lying And The Hidden.

When One Has No Character, One Has To Apply A Method. Here It Did Wonders Incontrovertibly, And I Am Living On The Site Of One Of The Greatest Crimes In Human History.

The Most Exhausting Effort In My Life Has Been To Suppress My Own Nature In Order To Make It Serve My Biggest Plans.

We Are Living In The Era Of Premeditation And The Perfect Crime. Our Criminals Are No Longer Helpless Children Who Could Plead Love As Their Excuse. On The Contrary, They Are Adults And The Have The Perfect Alibi: Philosophy, Which Can Be Used For Any Purpose - Even For Transforming Murderers Into Judges.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Have You Noticed That Only Death Arouses Our Emotions? How We Love Thee Friends Who Have Just Passed Away, Right? How We Admire Those Master Who No Longer Speak, Their Mouths Full Of Dirt. We Them We Are Not Obligated.

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

One Cannot Be A Part-time Nihilist.

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

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

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.

Gilbert Jonas, Painter, Believed In His Star.... His Own Faith Was Not, However, Without Its Virtues Because It Consisted In Admitting, In Some Obscure Way, That He Would Obtain Many Things Without Deserving Them.

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.

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

The Byronic Hero, Incapable Of Love, Or Capable Only Of An Impossible Love, Suffers Endlessly. He Is Solitary, Languid, His Condition Exhausts Him. If He Wants To Feel Alive, It Must Be In The Terrible Exaltation Of A Brief And Destructive Action.

We [writers] Must Know That We Can Never Escape The Common Misery And That Our Only Justification, If Indeed There Is A Justification, Is To Speak Up, Insofar As We Can, For Those Who Cannot Do So.

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

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.

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.

A Writer Cannot Put Himself Today In Service Of Those Who Make History; He Is At The Service Of Those Who Suffer It.

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.

Youth Is Above All A Collection Of Possibilities.

I Rebel; Therefore I Exist.

There Is A Metaphysical Honour In Ending The World's Absurdity. Conquest Or Play-acting, Multiple Loves, Absurd Revolt Are Tributes That Man Pays To His Dignity In A Campaign In Which He Is Defeated In Advance.... War Cannot Be Negated. One Must Live It Or Die Of It. So It Is With The Absurd: It Is A Question Of Breathing With It, Of Recognizing Its Lessons And Recovering Their Flesh. In This Regard The Absurd Joy Par Excellence Is Creation. "art And Nothing But Art", Said Nietzsche, "we Have Art In Order Not To Die Of The Truth."

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

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

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.

Absolute Justice Is Achieved By The Suppression Of All Contradiction, Therefore It Destroys Freedom.

Man Is An Idea, And A Precious Small Idea Once He Turns His Back On Love.

Precious Stones

Death Means Nothing To Men Like Me. It's The Event That Proves Them Right.

Fancy Language, Like Poplin, Too Often Conceals An Eczema.

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.

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.

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.

Do Not Be Afraid Of Spending Quality Time By Yourself. Find Meaning Or Don’t Find Meaning But “steal” Some Time And Give It Freely And Exclusively To Your Own Self. Opt For Privacy And Solitude. That Doesn’t Make You Antisocial Or Cause You To Reject The Rest Of The World. But You Need To Breathe. And You Need To Be.

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

When Love Ceases To Be Tragic It Is Something Else And The Individual Again Throws Himself In Search Of Tragedy.

Happiness And Love

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.

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.

Sometimes, Carrying On, Just Carrying On, Is The Superhuman Achievement.

We Can't Do Without Dominating Others Or Being Served.... The Essential Thing, In Sum, Is Being Able To Get Angry Without The Other Person Being Able To Answer Back.

The Absurd Hero's Refusal To Hope Becomes His Singular Ability To Live In The Present With Passion.

Live In The Present

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

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

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

The Words That Reverberate For Us At The Confines Of This Long Adventure Of Rebellion Are Not Formulas For Optimism, For Which We Have No Possible Use In The Extremities Of Our Unhappiness, But Words Of Courage And Intelligence Which, On The Shores Of The Eternal Seas, Even Have The Qualities Of Virtue.

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.

If God Did Not Exist, We Should Have To Invent Him. If God Did Exist, We Should Have To Abolish Him.

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.

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

The Struggle To Reach The Top Is Itself Enough To Fulfill The Heart Of Man. One Must Believe That Sisyphus Is Happy.

You Cannot Acquire Experience By Making Experiments. You Cannot Create Experience. You Must Undergo It.

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

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.

It's Not The Struggle That Makes Us Artists, But Art That Makes Us Struggle.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

The Most Loathsome Materialism Is Not The Kind People Usually Think Of, But The Sort That Attempts To Let Dead Ideas Pass For Living Realities, Diverting Into Sterile Myths The Stubborn And Lucid Attention We Give To What We Have Within Us That Must Forever Die.

At A Certain Level Of Suffering Or Injustice No One Can Do Anything For Anyone. Pain Is Solitary.

A Sub-clerk In The Post Office Is The Equal Of A Conqueror If Consciousness Is Common To Them. All Experiences Are Indifferent In This Regard. There Are Some That Do Either A Service Or A Disservice To Man. They Do Him A Service If He Is Conscious. Otherwise, That Has No Importance: A Man's Failures Imply Judgment, Not Of Circumstances, But Of Himself.

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.

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

The Struggle To The Top Alone Will Make A Human Heart Swell.

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 A Good, Hearty Laugh And An Energetic Handshake, And Those Are Trump Cards.

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.

We Have Art In Order Not To Die Of Life.

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.

Beauty Is Unbearable, Drives Us To Despair, Offering Us For A Minute The Glimpse Of An Eternity That We Should Like To Stretch Out Over The Whole Of Time.

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

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

Even When One Sits In The Prisoner's Dock, It Is Interesting To Hear Talk About Oneself.

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

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

Chacun Exige D'e" Tre Innocent, A' Tout Prix, Me" Me Si, Pour Cela, Il Faut Accuser Le Genre Humain Et Le Ciel. Everyone Insists On His Or Her Innocence, At All Costs, Even If It Means Accusing The Rest Of The Human Race And Heaven.

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.

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