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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.

-Albert Camus

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Powerful, Yes, That Is

Albert Camus

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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.

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

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

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.

What Did It Matter If He Existed For Two Or For Twenty Years? Happiness Was The Fact That He Had Existed.

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.

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

[love] Is The Type Of Disease That Spares Neither The Intelligent Nor The Idiotic.

Ironic Philosophies Produce Passionate Works.

To Create Today Is To Create Dangerously. Any Publication Is An Act, And That Act Exposes One To The Passions Of An Age That Forgives Nothing.

We Are All Special Cases.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Culture: The Cry Of Men In Face Of Their Destiny.

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.

That's The Way Man Is, Cher Monsieur. He Has Two Faces: He Can't Love Without Self-love.

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.

Only It Takes Time To Be Happy. A Lot Of Time. Happiness, Too, Is A Long Patience.

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

Independence Is Earned By A Few Words Of Cheap Confidence

Believe Me, For Certain Men At Least, Not Taking What One Doesn't Desire Is The Hardest Thing In The World.

You Know, [women] Do Not Really Condemn Any Weakness: Rather, They Try To Humiliate Or Disarm Our Strengths. That Is Why Women Arethe Reward, Not Of The Warrior, But Of The Criminal.

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.

Stupidity Has A Knack Of Getting Its Way.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Every Time I Hear A Political Speech Or I Read Those Of Our Leaders, I Am Horrified At Having, For Years, Heard Nothing Which Sounded Human. It Is Always The Same Words Telling The Same Lies. And The Fact That Men Accept This, That The People’s Anger Has Not Destroyed These Hollow Clowns, Strikes Me As Proof That Men Attribute No Importance To The Way They Are Governed; That They Gamble – Yes, Gamble – With A Whole Part Of Their Life And Their So Called 'vital Interests.

The Love Of God Is A Hard Love. It Demands Total Self-surrender, Disdain Of Our Human Personality. And Yet It Alone Can Reconcile Us To Suffering And The Deaths Of Children, It Alone Can Justify Them, Since We Cannot Understand Them, And We Can Only Make God's Will Ours.

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.

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.

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

Give Up The Tyranny Of Female Charm.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Art, At Least, Teaches Us That Man Cannot Be Explained By History Alone And That He Also Finds A Reason For His Existence In The Order Of Nature.

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.

I've Never Really Had Much Of An Imagination. But Still I Would Try To Picture The Exact Moment When The Beating Of My Heart Would No Longer Be Going On Inside My Head.

Capital Punishment Is The Most Premeditated Of Murders, To Which No Criminal's Deed, However Calculated Can Be Compared. For There To Be An Equivalency, The Death Penalty Would Have To Punish A Criminal Who Had Warned His Victim Of The Date At Which He Would Inflict A Horrible Death On Him And Who, From That Moment Onward, Had Confined Him At His Mercy For Months. Such A Monster Is Not Encountered In Private Life.

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.

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

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

Happiness And Love

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

I Have The Loftiest Idea, And The Most Passionate One, Of Art. Much Too Lofty To Agree To Subject It To Anything. Much Too Passionate To Want To Divorce It From Anything.

I Have Always Thought It Would Be Easier To Redeem A Man Steeped In Vice And Crime Than A Greedy, Narrow-minded, Pitiless Merchant.

For Who Would Dare To Assert That Eternal Happiness Can Compensate For A Single Moment's Human Suffering

Eternal Happiness

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

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

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?

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

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

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.

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.

I Am Not Made For Politics Because I Am Incapable Of Wanting Or Accepting The Death Of The Adversary.

A Taste For Truth At Any Cost Is A Passion Which Spares Nothing.

The Rebel Can Never Find Peace. He Knows What Is Good And, Despite Himself, Does Evil. The Value Which Supports Him Is Never Given To Him Once And For All - He Must Fight To Uphold It, Unceasingly.

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

In Our Well-policed Society We Recognize That An Illness Is Serious From The Fact That We Don't Dare Speak Of It Directly.

We Turn Toward God Only To Obtain The Impossible.

To Know Oneself, One Should Assert Oneself.

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

The Only Deep Emotion I Occasionally Felt In These Affairs Was Gratitude, When All Was Going Well And I Was Left, Not Only Peace, But Freedom To Come And Go--never Kinder And Gayer With One Woman Than When I Had Just Left Another's Bed, As If I Extended To All Others The Debt I Had Just Contracted Toward One Of Them.

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

The Real Passion Of The Twentieth Century Is Servitude.

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

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

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

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.

Then We Understand That Rebellion Cannot Exist Without A Strange Form Of Love. Those Who Find No Rest In God Or In History Are Condemned To Live For Those Who, Like Themselves, Cannot Live; In Fact, For The Humiliated.

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.

For If There Is A Sin Against Life, It Consists Perhaps Not So Much In Despairing Of Life As In Hoping For Another Life And In Eluding The Implacable Grandeur Of This Life.

Everything Is True, And Nothing Is True!

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

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

What Will Be Left Of The Power Of Example If It Is Proved That Capital Punishment Has Another Power, And A Very Real One, Which Degrades Men To The Point Of Shame, Madness, And Murder?

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 Plague")

The Realization That Life Is Absurd Cannot Be An End, But Only A Beginning.

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

The Nobility Of Our Calling Will Always Be Rooted In Two Commitments Difficult To Observe: Refusal To Lie About What We Know, And Resistance To Oppression.

…. Query: How Contrive Not To Waste One's Time? Answer: By Being Fully Aware Of It All The While. Ways In Which This Can Be Done: By Spending One's Days On An Uneasy Chair In A Dentist's Waiting-room; By Remaining On One's Balcony All Of A Sunday Afternoon; By Listening To Lectures In A Language On Doesn't Know; By Traveling By The Longest And Least-convenient Train Routes, And Of Course Standing All The Way; By Lining Up At The Box-office Of Theaters And Then Not Buying A Seat; And So Forth.

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.

We Have Art In Order Not To Die Of Life.

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.

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.

The Harshest Winter Finds An Invincible Summer In Us.

Invincible Summer

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

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

A Single Sentence Will Suffice For Modern Man. He Fornicated And Read The Papers. After That Vigorous Definition, The Subject Will Be, If I May Say So, Exhausted.

If The Only Significant History Of Human Thought Were To Be Written, It Would Have To Be The History Of Its Successive Regrets And Its Impotences.

Myth Of Sisyphus

Liberty Is The Right Not To Lie.

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.

More And More, When Faced With The World Of Men, The Only Reaction Is One Of Individualism. Man Alone Is An End Unto Himself. Everything One Tries To Do For The Common Good Ends In Failure.

As For Those Whose Role It Is To Love Us - I Mean, Relatives And In-laws (what A Word)- It's A Different Tune. They Find The Right Word, But It's Usually The One That Wounds.

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.

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.

In Order To Be Created, A Work Of Art Must First Make Use Of The Dark Forces Of The Soul

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

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

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.

The More I Accuse Myself, The More Right I Have To Judge You. Even Better, I Make You Judge Yourself, Which Comforts Me The More.

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.

Nothing In Life Is Worth, Turning Your Back On, If You Love It.

Turning Your Back

The Society Based On Production Is Only Productive, Not Creative.

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

We Have To Live And Let Live In Order To Create What We Are.

Live And Let Live

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.

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

I Was Always Able To Understand My Friend Who Decided To Quit Smoking And Who, Through An Effort Of Will, Succeeded In Doing So. One Morning, He Opened The Newspaper, Read That The First H- Bomb Had Exploded, Found Out About The Bomb's Admirable Effects And Went Straight To The Tobacconist's.

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.

Thus, In A Middle Course Between These Heights And Depths, They Drifted Through Life Rather Than Lived, The Prey Of Aimless Days And Sterile Memories, Like Wandering Shadows That Could Have Acquired Substance Only By Consenting To Root Themselves In The Solid Earth Of Their Distress.

Happiness Is Generous. It Does Not Subsist On Destruction.

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

To Live Is To Hurt Others, And Through Others, To Hurt Oneself. Cruel Earth! How Can We Manage Not To Touch Anything? To Find What Ultimate Exile?

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.

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."

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

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

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

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

Human Relationships Always Help Us To Carry On Because They Always Presuppose A Future.

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

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

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

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

Retaliation Is Related To Nature And Instinct, Not To Law. Law, By Definition, Cannot Obey The Same Rules As Nature.

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

The Innocent Is The Person Who Explains Nothing

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

Get Scared. It Will Do You Good. Smoke A Bit, Stare Blankly At Some Ceilings, Beat Your Head Against Some Walls, Refuse To See Some People, Paint And Write. Get Scared Some More. Allow Your Little Mind To Do Nothing But Function. Stay Inside, Go Out - I Don't Care What You'll Do; But Stay Scared As Hell. You Will Never Be Able To Experience Everything. So, Please, Do Poetical Justice To Your Soul And Simply Experience Yourself.

Experience Yourself

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

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.

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

My Life Was Lucky So That I Met, I Loved (and Disappointed) Only Outstanding People.

For Ever, I Shall Be A Stranger To Myself.

The Only Serious Question In Life Is Whether To Kill Yourself Or Not.

All Healthy Men Have Thought Of Their Own Suicide

Revolution, In Order To Be Creative, Cannot Do Without Either A Moral Or Metaphysical Rule To Balance The Insanity Of History.

Psychology Is Action, Not Thinking About Oneself.

I Do Not Want To Believe That Death Is The Gateway To Another Life. For Me, It Is A Closed Door. I Do Not Say It Is A Step We Must All Take, But That It Is A Horrible And Dirty Adventure.

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

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

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

Precious Stones

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

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.

It's Better To Bet On This Life Than On The Next.

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

The Great Courage Is To Stare As Squarely At The Light As At Death.

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

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!!

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

A Man Wants To Earn Money In Order To Be Happy, And His Whole Effort And The Best Of A Life Are Devoted To The Earning Of That Money. Happiness Is Forgotten; The Means Are Taken For The End.

When The Body Is Sad, The Heart Languishes.

Women Are All We Know Of Paradise On This Earth.

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.

If Christianity Is Pessimistic As To Man, It Is Optimistic As To Human Destiny. Well, I Can Say That, Pessimistic As To Human Destiny, I Am Optimistic As To Man.

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.

Madness Such As This, Its Like Trying To Stop A Fire With The Moisture From A Kiss

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

It Is Immoral Not To Tell.

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

The Act Of Love Is A Confession.

Life Should Be Lived To The Point Of Tears

A Fate Is Not A Punishment.

The Slave Begins By Demanding Justice And Ends By Wanting To Wear A Crown.

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

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.

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

Am Well. Thinking Of You Always. Love

Thinking Of You

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.

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

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.

Art Does Not Tolerate Reason.

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 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 Seas, Rains, Necessity, Desire, The Struggle Against Death--these Are Things That Unite Us All. We Resemble One Another In What We See Together, In What We Suffer Together. Dreams Change From Individual, But The Reality Of The World Is Common To Us All. Striving Towards Realism Is Therefore Legitimate, For It Is Basically Related To The Artistic Adventure.

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

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

There Is Not One Talent For Living And Another For Creating. The Same Suffices For Both. And One Can Be Sure That The Talent That Could Not Produce But An Artificial Work Could Not Sustain But A Frivolous Life.

Slave Camps Under The Flag Of Freedom, Massacres Justified By Philanthropy Or The Taste Of The Superhuman, Cripple Judgment. On The Day When Crime Puts On The Apparel Of Innocence, Through A Curious Reversal Peculiar To Our Age, It Is Innocence That Is Called On To Justify Itself. The Purpose Of This Essay Is To Accept And Study That Strange Challenge.

Happiness Implied A Choice, And Within That Choice A Concerted Will, A Lucid Desire.

Suffering Gives Us No Special Rights.

Martyrs, My Friend, Have To Choose Between Being Forgotten, Mocked Or Used. As For Being Understood - Never.

For The First Time In A Long Time I Thought About Maman. I Felt As If I Understood Why At The End Of Her Life She Had Taken A 'fiancé,' Why She Had Played At Beginning Again. Even There, In That Home Where Lives Were Fading Out, Evening Was A Kind Of Wistful Respite. So Close To Death, Maman Must Have Felt Free Then And Ready To Live It All Again. Nobody, Nobody Had The Right To Cry Over Her. And I Felt Ready To Live It All Again Too.

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.

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

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.

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

The Temptation Shared By All Forms Of Intelligence: Cynicism.

Beginning To Think Is Beginning To Be Undermined.

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