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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.

-Albert Camus

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She Was Waiting, But

Albert Camus

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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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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."

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

It Is Easy To Shield The Outer Body From Poisoned Arrows, But It Is Impossible To Shield The Mind From The Poisoned Darts That Originate Within Itself. Greed, Anger, Foolishness And The Infatuations Of Egoism - These Four Poisoned Darts Originate Within The Mind And Infect It With Deadly Poison.

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

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.

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

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.

Rebellion Cannot Exist Without A Strange Form Of Love.

From Paul To Stalin, The Popes Who Have Chosen Caesar Have Prepared The Way For Caesars Who Quickly Learn To Despise Popes.

I Don’t Know Whether This World Has A Meaning That Transcends It. But I Know That I Cannot Know That Meaning And That It Is Impossible For Me Just Now To Know It.

The French Revolution Gave Birth To No Artists But Only To A Great Journalist, Desmoulins, And To An Under-the-counter Writer, Sade. The Only Poet Of The Times Was The Guillotine.

There Is No Shame In Preferring Happiness.

It Is Easier To Kill What We Do Not Know.

Those Who Write Clearly Have Readers.

Writers And Writing

No Cause Justifies The Deaths Of Innocent People.

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

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

It Is Better For The Intellectual Not To Talk All The Time. To Begin With, It Would Exhaust Him, And, Above All, It Would Keep Him From Thinking. He Must Create If He Can, First And Foremost, Especially If His Creation Does Not Side-step The Problems Of His Time.

I Cling Like A Miser To The Freedom That Disappears As Soon As There Is An Excess Of Things.

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

Common Knowledge

The Loss Of Love Is The Loss Of All Rights, Even Though One Had Them All.

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

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.

As For Hitler, His Professed Religion Unhesitatingly Juxtaposed The God-providence And Valhalla. Actually His God Was An Argument At A Political Meeting And A Manner Of Reaching An Impressive Climax At The End Of Speeches.

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.

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.

Mostly, I Could Tell, I Made Him Feel Uncomfortable. He Didn't Understand Me, And He Was Sort Of Holding It Against Me. I Felt The Urge To Reassure Him That I Was Like Everybody Else, Just Like Everybody Else. But Really There Wasn't Much Point, And I Gave Up The Idea Out Of Laziness.

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

There Is Only One Class Of Men, The Privileged Class

Life Continues, And Some Mornings, Weary Of The Noise, Discouraged By The Prospect Of The Interminable Work To Keep After, Sickened Also By The Madness Of The World That Leaps At You From The Newspaper, Finally Convinced That I Will Not Be Equal To It And That I Will Disappoint Everyone - All I Want To Do Is Sit Down And Wait For Evening. This Is What I Feel Like, And Sometimes I Yield To It.

The Sense Of Doing Good , The Satisfaction Of Being Right, The Joy Of Looking Favorably Upon Oneself, Dear Sir, Are Powerful Levers For Keeping Us Upright And Making Us Progress. On The Other Hand, If Men Are Deprived Of That Feeling, They Are Changed Into Rabid Dogs.

On Good Days, If You Trust Life, Life Has To Answer You.

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

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

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.

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.

…. 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.

Psychology Is Action, Not Thinking About Oneself. We Continue To Shape Our Personality All Our Life. To Know Oneself, One Should Assert Oneself.

The Evil That Is In The World Always Comes Of Ignorance, And Good Intentions May Do As Much Harm As Malevolence, If They Lack Understanding.

In Order To Exist, Man Must Rebel, But Rebellion Must Respect The Limits That It Discovers In Itself - Limits Where Minds Meet, And In Meeting, Begin To Exist.

Everything Considered, A Determined Soul Will Always Manage.

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.

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

Men Cry Because Things Are Not What They Ought To Be.

Utopia Is That Which Is In Contradiction With Reality.

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

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.

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

Without Work All Life Goes Rotten.

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.

We Are Not Certain, We Are Never Certain. If We Were We Could Reach Some Conclusions, And We Could, At Last, Make Others Take Us Seriously.

Does The End Justify The Means? That Is Possible. But What Will Justify The End? To That Question, Which Historical Thought Leaves Pending, Rebellion Replies: The Means.

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

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

At The Heart Of All Beauty Lies Something Inhuman, And These Hills, The Softness Of The Sky, The Outline Of These Trees At This Very Minute Lose The Illusory Meaning With Which We Had Clothed Them, Henceforth More Remote Than A Lost Paradise . . . That Denseness And That Strangeness Of The World Is Absurd.

The Modern Mind Is In Complete Disarray. Knowledge Has Stretched Itself To The Point Where Neither The World Nor Our Intelligence Can Find Any Foot-hold. It Is A Fact That We Are Suffering From Nihilism.

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

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.

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

What Doesn't Kill You Make You Stronger And Stronger

Makes You Stronger

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.

The Contradiction Is This: Man Rejects The World As It Is, Without Accepting The Necessity Of Escaping It. In Fact, Men Cling To The World And By Far The Majority Do Not Want To Abandon It.

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

A Work Of Art Is A Confession.

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

[many Artists], Even The Greatest Ones, Are Not Sure Of Their Own Existence. So They Search For Proof, They Judge, They Condemn. It Strengthens Them, It Is The Beginnings Of Existence. They Are Alone!

We Are Condemned To Live Together.

In This Vast Country That He Had So Loved, He Was Alone.

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

Where There Is No Hope, We Must Invent It.

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.

A Symbol Always Transcends The One Who Makes Use Of It And Makes Him Say In Reality More Than He Is Aware Of Expressing.

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.

Obstinacy Alone Is Not A Virtue.

Nothing Is More Despicable Than Respect Based On Fear.

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

At 30 A Man Should Know Himself Like The Palm Of His Hand, Know The Exact Number Of His Defects And Qualities, Know How Far He Can Go, Foretell His Failures - Be What He Is. And, Above All, Accept These Things.

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

Moreover, Most People, Assuming They Had Not Altogether Abandoned Religious Observances, Or Did Not Combine Them Naively With A Thoroughly Immoral Way Of Living, Had Replace Normal Religious Practice By More Or Less Extravagant Superstitions.

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 Would Rather Live My Life As If There Is A God And Die To Find Out There Isn't, Than Live As If There Isn't And To Die To Find Out That There Is.

If There Is A God

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

My Great Idea Is That We Must Forgive The Pope. First Of All, He Needs It More Than Anyone Else. Besides, It Is The Only Way Of Placing Oneself Above Him.

It Is Not Rebellion Itself Which Is Noble But The Demands It Makes Upon Us.

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

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

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.

The Absurd Is A Shadow Cast Over Everything We Do And Even If We Try To Live Life As If It Has Meaning As If There Are Reasons For Doing Things The Absurd Will Linger In The Back Of Our Minds As A Nagging Doubt That Perhaps There Is No Point.

How Hard It Must Be To Live Only With What One Knows And What One Remembers, Cut Off From What One Hopes For!

Have Pity, Lord, On Those Who Love And Are Separated.

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

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

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.

But Perhaps We Should Love What We Cannot Understand

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Am Well. Thinking Of You Always. Love

Thinking Of You

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.

God Put Self-pity By The Side Of Despair Like The Cure By The Side Of The Disease.

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

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.

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

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

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.

It Is Better To Burn Than To Disappear.

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

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

It Is Not Your Paintings I Like, It Is Your Painting.

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.

Your Successes And Happiness Are Forgiven You Only If You Generously Consent To Share Them.

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.'

Fiction Is The Lie Through Which We Tell The Truth.

Telling The Truth

I Grew Up With The Sea, And Poverty For Me Was Sumptuous; Then I Lost The Sea And Found All Luxuries Gray And Poverty Unbearable.

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.

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

For What Gives Value To Travel Is Fear. It Breaks Down A Kind Of Inner Structure We Have. Travel Robs Us Of Such Refuge. Far From Our Own People, Our Own Language, Stripped Of All Our Props, Deprived Of Our Masks (one Doesn't Know The Fare On The Streetcars, Or Anything Else), We Are Completely On The Surface Of Ourselves.

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.

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.

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.

No Matter What Cause One Defends, It Will Suffer Permanent Disgrace If One Resorts To Blind Attacks On Crowds Of Innocent People.

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.

Everything Is True, And Nothing Is True!

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

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

The Look Of Success, When It Is Worn A Certain Way, Would Infuriate A Jackass.

That Is Love, To Give Away Everything, To Sacrifice Everything, Without The Slightest Desire To Get Anything In Return.3

It Is Always Easy To Be Logical. It Is Almost Impossible To Be Logical To The Bitter End.

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

An Intellectual Is Someone Whose Mind Watches Itself.

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

“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.”

Happiness Is Generous. It Does Not Subsist On Destruction.

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

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

At One Time Or Another All Normal People Have Wished Their Loved Ones Were Dead.

We Are Rebels For A Cause, Poets With A Dream , And We Won't Let This World Die Without A Fight.

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

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

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

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

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

There Is No More Futile Punishment Than Futile And Hopeless Labor.

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.

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.

Life Is The Result Of All Your Choices.

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.

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.

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

Once In The Midst Of A Seemingly Endless Winter, I Discovered Within Myself An Invincible Spring.

Man Stands Face To Face With The Irrational. He Feels Within Him His Longing For Happiness And For Reason. The Absurd Is Born Of This Confrontation Between The Human Need And The Unreasonable Silence Of The World.

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

A Fate Is Not A Punishment.

What Really Counted Was The Possibility Of Escape, A Leap To Freedom, Out Of The Implacable Ritual, A Wild Run For It That Would Give Whatever Chance For Hope There Was. Of Course, Hope Meant Being Cut Down On Some Street Corner, As You Ran Like Mad, By A Random Bullet. But When I Really Thought It Through, Nothing Was Going To Allow Me Such A Luxury. Everything Was Against It; I Would Just Be Caught Up In The Machinery Again.

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

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

Artistic Creation

Generally, I Like All Islands. There, It Is Easier To Rule.

The Real Passion Of The Twentieth Century Is Servitude.

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.

He Was Expressing His Certainty That My Appeal Would Be Granted, But I Was Carrying The Burden Of A Sin From Which I Had To Free Myself. According To Him, Human Justice Was Nothing And Divine Justice Was Everything. I Pointed Out It Was The Former That Had Condemned Me.

So The Thing That Bothered Me Most Was That The Condemned Man Had To Hope The Machine Would Work The First Time.

In Fact, It Comes To This: Nobody Is Capable Of Really Thinking About Anyone, Even In The Worst Calamity. For Really To Think About Someone Means Thinking About That Person Every Minute Of The Day, Without Letting One’s Thoughts Be Diverted By Anything- By Meals, By A Fly That Settles On One’s Cheek, By Household Duties, Or By A Sudden Itch Somewhere. But There Are Always Flies And Itches. That’s Why Life Is Difficult To Live.

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.

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

Autumn Is A Second Spring When Every Leaf Is A Flower.

There Is Always A Philosophy For Lack Of Courage.

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.

In Fact, Other People Create For Lack Of Power. I, On The Other Hand, Do Not Need A Work: I Live.

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.

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

The Harshest Winter Finds An Invincible Summer In Us.

Invincible Summer

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

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

We Rarely Confide In Those Who Are Better Than We Are.

...there Was Only One Thing That Interested Her And That Was Getting Into Bed With Men Whenever She'd The Chance. And I Warned Her Straight. 'you'll Be Sorry One Day, My Girl, And Wish You'd Got Me Back'.

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

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".

Thinking Of The Future, Establishing Aims For Oneself, Having Preferences-all This Presupposes A Belief In Freedom, Even If One Occasionally Ascertains That One Doesn't Feel It.

We Continue To Shape Our Personality All Our Life. If We Knew Ourselves Perfectly, We Should Die.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

We Spend Our Days In Deliberating, And We End Them Without Coming To Any Resolve.

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

For Instance, I Never Complained That My Birthday Was Overlooked; People Were Even Surprised, With A Touch Of Admiration, By My Discretion On This Subject. But The Reason For My Disinterestedness Was Even More Discreet: I Longed To Be Forgotten In Order To Be Able To Complain To Myself... Once My Solitude Was Thoroughly Proved, I Could Surrender To The Charms Of A Virile Self-pity.

One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy.

In Our Wildest Aberrations We Dream Of An Equilibrium We Have Left Behind And Which We Naively Expect To Find At The End Of Our Errors. Childish Presumption Which Justifies The Fact That Child-nations, Inheriting Our Follies, Are Now Directing Our History.

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

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

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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