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Since We're All Going To Die, It's Obvious That When And How Don't Matter.
-Albert Camus
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Since We're All Going

Albert Camus
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Since We're All Going To Die, It's Obvious That When And How Don't Matter.

Understanding the Quote: "since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how..."

This quote by Albert Camus reflects deeply on the theme of death. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Death, Matter, Stranger, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Albert Camus interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Albert Camus

Albert Camus is celebrated for insightful thoughts on death and matter. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Death
Matter
Stranger
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Blessed Are The Hearts That Can Bend; They Shall Never Be Broken.
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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.
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Joy
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It Is Terrifying To See How Easily, In Certain People, All Dignity Collapses. Yet When You Think About It, This Is Quite Normal Since They Only Maintain This Dignity By Constantly Striving Against Their Own Nature.
Thinking
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The Purpose Of A Writer Is To Keep Civilization From Destroying Itself.
Writing
Civilization
Purpose
Fate Is Not In Man But Around Him
Fate
Men
O Light! This The Cry Of All The Characters Of Ancient Drama Brought Face To Face With Their Fate. This Last Resort Was Ours, Too, And I Knew It Now. In The Middle Of Winter I At Last Discovered That There Was In Me An Invincible Summer.
Summer
Drama
Character
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.
Heart
Faces
Wonder
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.
Mean
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Order
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.
Art
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To Be Happy, We Must Not Be Too Concerned With Others.
Happiness
Happy
Laughter
The Day Of My Arrest I Was First Put In A Room Where There Were Already Several Other Prisoners, Most Of Them Arabs. They Laughed When They Saw Me. Then They Asked What I Was In For. I Said I'd Killed An Arab And They Were All Silent
Rooms
Saws
Firsts
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.
Compassion
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What Can A Meaning Outside My Condition Mean To Me? I Can Understand Only In Human Terms. What I Touch, What Resists Me - That I Understand. And These Two Certainties - My Appetite For The Absolute And For Unity And The Impossibility Of Reducing This World To A Rational And Reasonable Principle - I Also Know That I Cannot Reconcile Them. What Other Truth Can I Admit Without Lying, Without Bringing In A Hope I Lack And Which Means Nothing Within The Limits Of My Conditions?
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There Are Always Reasons For Murdering A Man. But There Is No Justification For His Existence.
Men
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There Are Some Individuals Who Have Too Strong A Craving, A Will, And A Nostalgia For Happiness Ever To Reach It. They Always Retain A Bitter And Passionate Aftertaste, And That's The Best They Can Hope For.
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We Do Not Know How To Eliminate Evil, But We Do Know How To Feed Some Of The Hungry And Heal Some Of The Infirmed.
Evil
Hungry
Heal
Do You Believe In God, Doctor?" No - But What Does That Really Mean? I'm Fumbling In The Dark, Struggling To Make Something Out. But I've Long Ceased Finding That Original.
Believe
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After All Perhaps The Greatness Of Art Lies In The Perpetual Tension Between Beauty And Pain, The Love Of Men And The Madness Of Creation, Unbearable Solitude And The Exhausting Crowd, Rejection And Consent.
Art
Pain
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All That I Know Most Surely About Morality And Obligations I Owe To Football.
Football
Morality
Obligation
Whatever Prevents You From Doing Your Work Has Become Your Work.
Work
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.
Dream
Children
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When Love Ceases To Be Tragic It Is Something Else And The Individual Again Throws Himself In Search Of Tragedy.
Tragedy
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The Gods Had Condemned Sisyphus To Ceaselessly Rolling A Rock To The Top Of A Mountain, Whence The Stone Would Fall Back Of Its Own Weight. They Had Thought With Some Reason That There Is No More Dreadful Punishment Than Futile And Hopeless Labor.
Fall
Punishment
Rocks
Everyone Would Like To Behave Like A Pagan, With Everyone Else Behaving Like A Christian.
Christian
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It Would Be Unjust, And Moreover Utopian, For Shakespeare To Direct The Shoemakers' Union. But It Would Be Equally Disastrous Forthe Shoemakers' Union To Ignore Shakespeare.
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Unions
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Myths Are Made For The Imagination To Breath Life Into Them.
Imagination
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What’s True Of All The Evils In The World Is True Of Plague As Well. It Helps Men To Rise Above Themselves.
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I Draw From The Absurd Three Consequences: My Revolt, My Liberty, My Passion.
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I Longed To Be Forgotten In Order To Be Able To Complain To Myself.
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Able
I Sometimes Need To Write Things Which I Cannot Completely Control But Which Therefore Prove That What Is In Me Is Stronger Than I Am.
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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.
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In The Next Few Years The Struggle Will Not Be Between Utopia And Reality, But Between Different Utopias, Each Trying To Impose Itself On Reality ... We Can No Longer Hope To Save Everything, But ... We Can At Least Try To Save Lives, So That Some Kind Of Future, If Perhaps Not The Ideal One, Will Remain Possible.
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It Is Not True That The Heart Wears Out - But The Body Creates This Illusion.
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Likewise And During Every Day Of An Unillustrious Life, Time Carries Us. But A Moment Always Comes When We Have To Carry It.
Moments
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... One Cannot Be Happy In Exile Or In Oblivion. One Cannot Always Be A Stranger. I Want To Return To My Homeland, Make All My Loved Ones Happy. I See No Further Than This.
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Don't Wait For The Last Judgment - It Takes Place Every Day.
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Waiting
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.
Waiting
Doubt
Stubborn
The Struggle To The Top Alone Will Make A Human Heart Swell.
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There Are People Who Prefer To Look Their Fate In The Eye
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Murder Is Terribly Exhausting.
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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.
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If We Understood The Enigmas Of Life There Would Be No Need For Art.
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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.
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How Had I Not Seen That There Was Nothing More Important Than An Execution, And That When You Come Right Down To It, It Was The Only Thing A Man Could Truly Be Interested In?
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All I Know Of Morality I Learned From Football
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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.
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You Must Have A Love, A Great Love, To Ensure An Alibi At Unjustified Despairs That Conquer All Of Us
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To Stay Or To Go, It Amounted To The Same Thing.
Conscious Of Not Being Able To Separate Myself From My Time, I Have Decided To Become Part Of It.
Able
Conscious
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We Are Condemned To Live Together.
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The Workman Of Today Works Every Day In His Life At The Same Tasks, And This Fate Is No Less Absurd. But It Is Tragic Only At The Rare Moments When It Becomes Conscious.
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People Hasten To Judge In Order Not To Be Judged Themselves.
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Only He Who Is Uncompromising As To His Rights Maintains The Sense Of Duty.
Rights
Duty
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There Are Plagues, And There Are Victims, And It's The Duty Of Good Men Not To Join Forces With The Plagues.
Men
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I Like These People Swarming On The Sidewalks, Wedged Into A Little Space Of Houses And Canals, Hemmed In By Fogs, Cold Lands, And The Sea Streaming Like A Wet Wash. I Like Them, For They Are Double. They Are Here And Elsewhere.
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Fog
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I Have Not Stopped Loving That Which Is Sacred In This World.
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Sacred
I Am Too Far Away From What I Love And My Distance Is Without Remedy.
Distance
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Alienation
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The Need To Be Right Is The Sign Of A Vulgar Mind.
Life
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Believe
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There Is But One Truly Serious Philosophical Problem And That Is Suicide.
Suicide
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A Loveless World Is A Dead World.
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Ce Que Je Sais De La Morale, C'est Au Football Que Je Le Dois. (i Know Of Morality, It Is Football That I Owe.)
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The Most Knowledgeable Person In One Domain May Be The Most Ignorant In Another.
Knowledgeable Person
Ignorant
May
Those Who Weep For The Happy Periods Which They Encounter In History Acknowledge What They Want; Not The Alleviation But The Silencing Of Misery.
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All That Remains Is A Fate Whose Outcome Alone Is Fatal. Outside Of That Single Fatality Of Death, Everything, Joy Or Happiness, Is Liberty. A World Remains Of Which Man Is The Sole Master. What Bound Him Was The Illusion Of Another World. The Outcome Of His Thought, Ceasing To Be Renunciatory, Flowers In Images. It Frolics---in Myths, To Be Sure, But Myths With No Other Depth Than That Of Human Suffering And, Like It, Inexhaustible. Not The Divine Fable That Amuses And Blinds, But The Terrestrial Face, Gesture, And Drama In Which Are Summed Up A Difficult Wisdom And An Ephemeral Passion.
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Finally, And Most Of All, Words Failed Him.
Everybody Knows Life Isn't Worth Living.
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It Is Natural To Give A Clear View Of The World After Accepting The Idea That It Must Be Clear.
Views
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Giving
We Have To Live And Let Live In Order To Create What We Are.
Order
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That's Love, Giving Everything, Sacrificing All Without Hope Of Return.
Sacrifice
Giving
Return
A Symbol Always Transcends The One Who Makes Use Of It And Makes Him Say In Reality More Than He Is Aware Of Expressing.
Reality
Use
Existential
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.
Cells
Desire
Would Be
I Don't Want To Represent Man As He Is, But Only As He Might Be.
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Want
Might
To Create Is Likewise To Give A Shape To One's Fate
Fate
Giving
Shapes
Working Conditions For Me Have Always Been Those Of The Monastic Life: Solitude And Frugality. Except For Frugality, They Are Contrary To My Nature, So Much So That Work Is A Violence I Do To Myself.
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Violence
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I Was Absent At The Moment I Took Up The Most Space.
Space
Moments
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Any Country Where I Am Not Bored Is A Country That Teaches Me Nothing.
Country
Travel
Boredom
Old Women Even Forget How To Love Their Sons. The Heart Gets Worn Out, Monsieur.
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Son
How To Love
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.
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A True Masterpiece Does Not Tell Everything.
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In Order To Be Created, A Work Of Art Must First Make Use Of The Dark Forces Of The Soul
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Dark
Order
We Are All Special Cases.
Appreciation
Teacher
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If Those Whom We Begin To Love Could Know Us As We Were Before Meeting Them They Could Perceive What They Have Made Of Us.
Happiness And Love
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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.
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To Be Born To Create, To Love, To Win At Games Is To Be Born To Live In Time Of Peace. But War Teaches Us To Lose Everything And Become What We Were Not. It All Becomes A Question Of Style.
Peace
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What Made Me Run Away Was Doubtless Not So Much The Fear Of Settling Down, But Of Settling Down Permanently In Something Ugly.
Running
Ugly
Settling
If The Descent Is Thus Sometimes Performed In Sorrow, It Can Also Take Place In Joy.
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Imagination Offers People Consolation For What They Cannot Be, And Humor For What They Actually Are.
Art
People
Imagination
I Do Not Want To Found Anything On The Incomprehensible. I Want To Know Whether I Can Live With What I Know And With That Alone.
Atheism
Want
Found
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.
Effort
Guilty
Virtue
After All Manner Of Professors Have Done Their Best For Us, The Place We Are To Get Knowledge Is In Books. The True University Of These Days Is A Collection Of Books.
Teacher
Retirement
Book
I Can Feel This Heart Inside Me And I Conclude It Exists. I Can Touch This World And I Also Conclude That It Exists. All My Knowledge Ends At This Point. The Rest Is Hypothesis.
Heart
World
Chaos
The Absurd Has Meaning Only In So Far As It Is Not Agreed To.
Absurd
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.
Friday
Monday
Sleep
A Sub-clerk In The Post-office Is The Equal Of A Conqueror If Consciousness Is Common To Them.
Office
Clerks
Common
For There Is Merely Bad Luck In Not Being Loved; There Is Misfortune In Not Loving.
Love
Luck
Misfortunes
In The Vast Reaches Of The Dry, Cold Night, Thousands Of Stars Were Constantly Appearing, And Their Sparkling Icicles, Loosened At Once, Began To Slip Gradually Toward The Horizon.
Stars
Night
Horizon
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Time
Art
Needs
“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.”
Men
Thinking
Despair
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.
Memories
Sorrow
Purpose
Absolute Justice Is Achieved By The Suppression Of All Contradiction, Therefore It Destroys Freedom.
Wisdom
Justice
Liberty
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.'
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World
Principles
Beginning To Think Is Beginning To Be Undermined.
Thinking
I've Seen Of Enough Of People Who Die For An Idea. I Don't Believe In Heroism; I Know It's Easy And I've Learned It Can Be Murderous. What Interests Me Is Living And Dying For What One Loves.
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Ideas
People
The Spirit Of Rebellion Can Only Exist In A Society Where A Theoretical Equality Conceals Great Factual Inequalities. The Problem Of Rebellion, Therefore, Has No Meaning Except Within Our Own Western Society.
Spirit
Problem
Rebellion
Once In The Midst Of A Seemingly Endless Winter, I Discovered Within Myself An Invincible Spring.
Spring
Winter
Midst
In A Universe Suddenly Divested Of Illusion And Lights, Man Feels An Alien, A Stranger. His Exile Is Without Remedy Since He Is Deprived Of The Memory Of A Lost Home Or The Hope Of A Promised Land.
Memories
Fear
Home
When There Is No Hope, One Must Invent Hope.
No Hope
The Best Revenge You Can Have On Intellectuals Is To Be Madly Happy.
Revenge
Best Revenge
The Future Is The Only Transcendental Value For Men Without God.
Men
Transcendental
Without God
You Will Never Live If You Are Looking For The Meaning Of Life.
Life
Happiness
Happy
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.
Life
Success
Humor
If Nothing Had Any Meaning, You Would Be Right. But There Is Something That Still Has A Meaning.
Meaning Of Life
Would Be
Stills
[liberty] Is A Choreand A Long-distance Race, Quite Solitary, Quite Exhausting.
Distance
Race
Long
A Trial Cannot Be Conducted By Announcing The General Culpability Of A Civilization. Only The Actual Deeds Which, At Least, Stank In The Nostrils Of The Entire World Were Brought To Judgment.
Civilization
Deeds
Trials
To Govern Means To Pillage, As Everyone Knows.
Mean
Knows
Men Must Live And Create. Live To The Point Of Tears.
Inspirational
Life
Men
Integrity Needs No Rules.
Integrity
Needs
Ethics
Some People Talk In Their Sleep. Lecturers Talk While Other People Sleep.
Sleep
Insomnia
People
Somebody Has To Have The Last Word. If Not, Every Argument Could Be Opposed By Another And We'd Never Be Done With It.
Anger
Done
Lasts
My Dear, In The Midst Of Hate, I Found There Was, Within Me, An Invincible Love. In The Midst Of Tears, I Found There Was, Within Me, An Invincible Smile. In The Midst Of Chaos, I Found There Was, Within Me, An Invincible Calm. I Realized, Through It All, That… In The Midst Of Winter, I Found There Was, Within Me, An Invincible Summer. And That Makes Me Happy. For It Says That No Matter How Hard The World Pushes Against Me, Within Me, There’s Something Stronger – Something Better, Pushing Right Back. Truly Yours, Albert Camus
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Wisdom
Hate
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Heroism
Difficult
Freedom Is Nothing But A Chance To Be Better.
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4th Of July
Independence
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.
Freedom
Action
Individual
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?
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Men
Doe
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.
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Health
Smoking
In Art, Rebellion Is Consummated And Perpetuated In The Act Of Real Creation, Not In Criticism Or Commentary.
Art
Real
Criticism
All That Remains Is A Fate Whose Outcome Alone Is Fatal. Outside Of That Single Fatality Of Death, Everything, Joy Or Happiness, Is Liberty. A World Remains Of Which Man Is The Sole Master. What Bound Him Was The Illusion Of Another World.
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Men
Joy
I Had Been Right I Was Still Right I Was Always Right. I Had Lived My Life One Way And I Could Just As Well Lived It Another. I Had Done This And I Hadn T Done That. I Hadn T Done This Thing And I Had Done Another. And So?
Done
Way
Wells
To Insure The Adoration Of A Theorem For Any Length Of Time, Faith Is Not Enough, A Police Force Is Needed As Well.
Time
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Evil
Claims
Remedy
Maman Used To Say That You Can Always Find Something To Be Happy About.
Used
If Pimps And Thieves Everywhere Were Always Punished, Honest People Would All Believe Themselves Always To Be Innocent.
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People
Justice
At A Certain Level Of Suffering Or Injustice No One Can Do Anything For Anyone. Pain Is Solitary.
Pain
Suffering
Levels
Politics And The Fate Of Mankind Are Formed By Men Without Ideals And Without Greatness. Those Who Have Greatness Within Them Do Not Go In For Politics.
Fate
Greatness
Destiny
I Had The Whole Sky In My Eyes And It Was Blue And Gold.
Eye
Blue
Sky
You Make The Mistake Of Thinking You Have To Choose, That You Have To Do What You Want, That There Are Conditions For Happiness. What Matters — All That Matters, Really Is The Will To Happiness, A Kind Of Enormous, Ever Present Consciousness. The Rest - Women , Art, Success — Is Nothing But Excuses. A Canvas Waiting For Our Embroideries.
Art
Mistake
Thinking
One Of The Only Coherent Philosophical Positions Is Thus Revolt. It Is A Constant Confrontation Between Man And His Own Obscurity.
Philosophical
Men
Obscurity
Charm Is A Way Of Getting The Answer 'yes' Without Asking A Clear Question.
Inspirational
Charming Smile
Asking
Old Married People Look So Much Alike That They Have The Same Number Of Hairs In Their Ears.
Marriage
Hair
Numbers
A Stranger To Myself And To The World, Armed Solely With A Thought That Negates Itself As Soon As It Asserts, What Is This Condition In Which I Can Have Peace Only By Refusing To Know And To Live, In Which The Appetite For Conquest Bumps Into Walls That Defy Its Assaults?
Wall
Bumps
World
What's Natural Is The Microbe. All The Rest-heath, Integrity, Purity (if You Like)-is A Product Of The Human Will, Of A Vigilance That Must Never Falter. The Good Man, The Man Who Infects Hardly Anyone, Is The Man Who Has The Fewest Lapses Of Attention.
Integrity
Men
Good Man
I Know That Man Is Capable Of Great Deeds. But If He Isn't Capable Of Great Emotion, Well, He Leaves Me Cold.
Life
Men
Deeds
The Soul Of A Murderer Is Blind
Soul
Blind
Murderer
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.
Country
Men
Thinking
But In The End One Needs More Courage To Live Than To Kill Himself.
Life
Suicide
Courage
To Write Is To Become Disinterested. There Is A Certain Renunciation In Art.
Art
Writing
Disinterest
Ah, Mon Cher, For Anyone Who Is Alone, Without God And Without A Master, The Weight Of Days Is Dreadful.
Solitude
Religion
Weight
Find Your Happiness In Yourself.
Happiness
In The World There Is, Parallel To The Force Of Death And Constraint, An Enormous Force Of Persuasion That Is Called Culture.
Culture
World
Persuasion
She Was Wearing A Pair Of My Pajamas With The Sleeves Rolled Up. When She Laughed I Wanted Her Again. A Minute Later She Asked Me If I Loved Her. I Told Her It Didn't Mean Anything But That I Didn't Think So. She Looked Sad. But As We Were Fixing Lunch, And For No Apparent Reason, She Laughed In Such A Way That I Kissed Her.
Mean
Thinking
Lunch
People Don't Love Each Other At Our Age, Marthe—they Please Each Other, That's All. Later On, When You're Old And Impotent, You Can Love Someone. At Our Age, You Just Think You Do. That's All It Is.
Love
Thinking
People
Freedom Is Not A Reward Or A Decoration That Is Celebrated With Champagne...oh No! It's A...long Distance Race, Quite Solitary And Very Exhausting.
Distance
Race
Long
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?
Destiny
People
Finals
There Is No Longer A Single Idea Explaining Everything, But An Infinite Number Of Essences Giving A Meaning To An Infinite Number Of Objects. The World Comes To A Stop, But Also Lights Up.
Light
Essence
Ideas
He Had Been Bored, That's All, Bored Like Most People. Hence He Had Made Himself Out Of Whole Cloth A Life Full Of Complications And Drama. Something Must Happen - And That Explains Most Human Commitments. Something Must Happen, Even Loveless Slavery, Even War Or Death. Hurray Then For Funerals!
War
Drama
Commitment
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.
Attitude
Fighting
Giving
The Absurd Depends As Much On Man As On The World. For The Moment, It Is All That Links Them Together.
Men
Together
World
The Society Of Merchants Can Be Defined As A Society In Which Things Disappear In Favor Of Signs. When A Ruling Class Measures Its Fortunes, Not By The Acre Of Land Or The Ingot Of Gold, But By The Number Of Figures Corresponding Ideally To A Certain Number Of Exchange Operations, It Thereby Condemns Itself To Setting A Certain Kind Of Humbug At The Center Of Its Experience And Its Universe. A Society Founded On Signs Is, In Its Essence, An Artificial Society In Which Man's Carnal Truth Is Handled As Something Artificial.
Men
Numbers
Land
The Only Way To Deal With An Unfree World Is To Become So Absolutely Free That Your Very Existence Is An Act Of Rebellion.
Freedom
Badass
Bad Ass
To Lose The Touch Of Flowers And Women's Hands Is The Supreme Separation.
Flower
Hands
Separation
Over There, In Europe, All Was Shame And Anger. Here It Was Exile Or Solitude, Among These Languid And Agitated Madmen Who Danced In Order To Die.
Anger
Order
Europe
... Man Has An Idea Of A Better World Than This. But Better Does Not Mean Different, It Means Unified... Religion Or Crime, Every Human Endeavor In Fact, Finally Obeys This Unreasonabledesire And Claims To Give Life A Form It Does Not Have.
Mean
Men
Ideas
We All Have A Weakness For Beauty.
Weakness
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.
Gratitude
Sex
Bed
It's Not Your Pictures I Like; It's Your Painting.
Painting
Each Generation Doubtless Feels Called Upon To Reform The World. Mine Knows That It Will Not Reform It, But Its Task Is Perhaps Even Greater. It Consists In Preventing The World From Destroying Itself.
World
Reform
Tasks
Where Would His Torture Be, Indeed, If At Every Step The Hope Of Succeeding Upheld Him?
Succeed
Steps
Torture
Without Work All Life Goes Rotten.
Work
Rotten
Stifling
Even When One Sits In The Prisoner's Dock, It Is Interesting To Hear Talk About Oneself.
Interesting
Trials
Docks
There Is But One Truly Serious Philosophical Problem And That Is Suicide. Judging Whether Life Is Or Is Not Worth Living Amounts To Answering The Fundamental Question Of Philosophy. All The Rest — Whether Or Not The World Has Three Dimensions, Whether The Mind Has Nine Or Twelve Categories — Comes Afterwards. These Are Games; One Must First Answer.
Suicide
Philosophy
Philosophical
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.
Dog
Powerful
Men
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.
Freedom
Way
Normal
Thus Each Of Us Had To Be Content To Live Only For The Day, Alone Under The Vast Indifference Of The Sky.
Sky
Indifference
We Must Stitch Up What Has Been Torn Apart, Render Justice Imaginable In The World Which Is So Obviously Unjust, Make Happiness Meaningful For Nations Poisoned By The Misery Of This Century. Naturally, It Is A Superhuman Task. But Tasks Are Called Superhuman When Men Take A Long Time To Complete Them, That Is All.
Meaningful
Hope
Men
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.
Character
Men
History
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.
Attitude
Character
Passion
When I See A New Face, Something Sets Off An Alarm Bell Inside Me. 'slow Down! Danger!' Even When The Attraction Is Strongest, I Am On My Guard.
Alarms
Bells
Faces
To Know Oneself, One Should Assert Oneself.
Motivational
Inspiring
Should
I Have Never Been Able, Really, To Regret Anything In All My Life. I Have Always Been Far Much Too Absorbed In The Present Moment Or The Immediate Future To Think Back.
Life
Regret
Thinking
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.
Sky
Tree
Looks
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.
Death
Mouths
Dirt
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.
Passion
Roots
Hatred
No Cause Justifies The Deaths Of Innocent People.
People
Causes
Innocent
In The Light, The Earth Remains Our First And Our Last Love. Our Brothers Are Breathing Under The Same Sky As We; Justice Is A Living Thing. Now Is Born That Strange Joy Which Helps One Live And Die, And Which We Shall Never Again Postpone To A Later Time.
Brother
Light
Sky
Suffering Gives Us No Special Rights.
Rights
Giving
Suffering
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.
Men
Office
Clerks
The Ancients, Even Though They Believed In Destiny , Believed Primarily In Nature , In Which They Participated Wholeheartedly. To Rebel Against Nature Amounted To Rebelling Against Oneself. It Was Butting One's Head Against A Wall.
Wall
Destiny
Rebel
My Profession Lent Itself Nicely To My Vocation For Heights. It Freed Me Of Any Bitterness Towards My Fellow Men, Who Were Alwaysin My Debt, Without My Owing Them Anything. It Placed Me Above The Judge Whom, I In Turn Judged, Above The Defendant Whom I Forced Into Gratitude.
Gratitude
Men
Law
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.
Character
Wonder
Crime
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?
Real
Men
Example
Nothing In The World Is Worth Turning One's Back On What One Loves.
World
One Love
But Perhaps We Should Love What We Cannot Understand
Should
We Must Learn How To Lend Ourselves To Dreaming When Dreams Lend Themselves To Us.
Dream
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