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The Entire History Of Mankind Is, In Any Case, Nothing But A Prolonged Fight To The Death For The Conquest Of Universal Prestige And Absolute Power.

-Albert Camus

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The Entire History Of

Albert Camus

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The Entire History Of Mankind Is, In Any Case, Nothing But A Prolonged Fight To The Death For The Conquest Of Universal Prestige And Absolute Power.

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To Abandon Oneself To Principles Is Really To Die - And To Die For An Impossible Love Which Is The Contrary Of Love.

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.

Still, Obviously, One Can't Be Sensible All The Time.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Art And Revolt Will Die Only With The Last Man.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Beware Of Those Who Say: "i Know This Too Well To Be Able To Express It." For If They Cannot Do So, This Is Because They Don't Know It Or Because Out Of Laziness They Stopped At The Outer Crust.

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

The Future Is The Only Transcendental Value For Men Without God.

There Is So Much Stubborn Hope In The Human Heart.

I Have No Friends, I Only Have Accomplices Now. On The Other Hand, My Accomplices Are More Numerous Than My Friends: They Are The Human Race.

There Is No Fate That Cannot Be Surmounted By Scorn.

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

It Is The Job Of Thinking People Not To Be On The Side Of The Executioners.

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.

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

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.

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

It Is Immoral Not To Tell.

The One Who Doesnt Play, Doesnt Win Anything, But He Actually Looses Somehting, {playing}

Murder Is Terribly Exhausting.

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.

I Know That Man Is Capable Of Great Deeds. But If He Isn't Capable Of Great Emotion, Well, He Leaves Me Cold.

He Was Conscious Of The Disastrous Fact That Love And Desire Must Be Expressed In The Same Way.

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

We Are Condemned To Live Together.

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.

Life Is A Sum Of All Your Choices". So, What Are You Doing Today?

Decisions You Make

On Certain Mornings, As We Turn A Corner, An Exquisite Dew Falls On Our Heart And Then Vanishes. But The Freshness Lingers, And This, Always, Is What The Heart Needs. The Earth Must Have Risen In Just Such A Light The Morning The World Was Born.

Mistakes Are Joyful, Truth Infernal.

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

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

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

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.

Capital Punishment Is The Most Premeditated Of Murders.

...we Rarely Confide In Those Who Are Better Than We. Rather, We Are More Inclined To Flee Their Society. Most Often, On The Other Hand, We Confess To Those Who Are Like Us And Who Share Our Weaknesses. Hence We Don't Want To Improve Ourselves And Be Bettered, For We Should First Have To Be Judged In Default. We Merely Wish To Be Pitied And Encouraged In The Course We Have Chosen. In Short, We Should Like, At The Same Time, To Cease Being Guilty And Yet Not To Make The Effort Of Cleansing Ourselves.

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

“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.”

A Man's Work Is Nothing But This Slow Trek To Rediscover, Through The Detours Of Art, Those Two Or Three Great And Simple Images In Whose Presence His Heart First Opened.

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

Humans Are Creatures, Who Spent Their Lifes Trying To Convince Themselves, That Their Existence Is Not Absurd

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

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

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

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

You Cannot Create Experience. You Must Undergo It.

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

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

Nothing Is More Despicable Than Respect Based On Fear.

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.

What Is A Rebel? A Man Who Says No.

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

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?

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

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.

Some Cry: 'love Me!!' Others: 'don't Love Me!!' But A Certain Genus, The Worst And Most Unhappy, Cries: 'don't Love Me And Be Faithful To Me!!'

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

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

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

Freedom Is The Right To Never Have To Lie.

When I Look At My Life And Its Secret Colors, I Feel Like Bursting Into Tears.

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

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

To Grow Old Is To Pass From Passion To Compassion.

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.

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

There Are People Who Prefer To Look Their Fate In The Eye

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

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

The Best Are Led To Make Greater Demands Upon Themselves. As For Those Who Succumb, They Did Not Deserve To Survive.

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.

Today We Are Always As Ready To Judge As We Are To Fornicate.

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.

The Innocent Is The Person Who Explains Nothing

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.

There Are People Who Vindicate The World, Who Help Others Live Just By Their Presence.

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

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

The Only Way Out [of International Dictatorship] Is To Place International Law Above Governments, Which Means [...] That There Must Be A Parliament For Making It, And That Parliament Must Be Constituted By Means Of Worldwide Elections In Which All Nations Will Take Part.

It Is Not Humiliating To Be Unhappy. Physical Suffering Is Sometimes Humiliating, But The Suffering Of Being Cannot Be, It Is Life.

Happiness And Love

…. 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.

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.

I Know Of Only One Duty, And That Is To Love.

You Must Have A Love, A Great Love, To Ensure An Alibi At Unjustified Despairs That Conquer All Of Us

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

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

Peace Is The Only Battle Worth Waging.

I May Not Have Been Sure About What Really Did Interest Me, But I Was Absolutely Sure About What Didn't.

Many Fledgling Moralists In Those Days Were Going About Our Town Proclaiming There Was Nothing To Be Done About It And We Should Bow To The Inevitable. And Tarrou, Rieux, And Their Friends Might Give One Answer Or Another, But Its Conclusion Was Always The Same, Their Certitude That A Fight Must Be Put Up, In This Way Or That, And There Must Be No Bowing Down... There Was Nothing Admirable About This Attitude; It Was Merely Logical.

It 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.

Women Are All We Know Of Paradise On This Earth.

You Will Never Be Happy If You Continue To Search For What Happiness Consists Of. You Will Never Live If You Are Looking For The Meaning Of Life.

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

Thus, I Always Began By Assuming The Worst; My Appeal Was Dismissed. That Meant, Of Course, I Was To Die. Sooner Than Others, Obviously. 'but,' I Reminded Myself, 'it's Common Knowledge That Life Isn't Worth Living, Anyhow.' And, On A Wide View, I Could See That It Makes Little Difference Whether One Dies At The Age Of Thirty Or Threescore And Ten-- Since, In Either Case, Other Men Will Continue Living, The World Will Go On As Before. Also, Whether I Died Now Or Forty Years Hence, This Business Of Dying Had To Be Got Through, Inevitably.

After Awhile You Could Get Used To Anything.

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.

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

As Soon As One Does Not Kill Oneself, One Must Keep Silent About Life.

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

Judging Whether Life Is Or Is Not Worth Living Amounts To Answering The Fundamental Question Of Philosophy.

Art Does Not Tolerate Reason.

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

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

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

People Have Played On Words And Pretended To Believe That Refusing To Grant A Meaning To Life Necessarily Leads To Declaring That It Is Not Worth Living. In Truth, There Is No Necessary Common Measure Between These Two Judgments.

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

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

The Mind's Deepest Desire, Even In Its Most Elaborate Operations, Parallels Man's Unconscious Feeling In The Face Of His Universe: It Is An Insistence Upon Familiarity, An Appetite For Clarity.

Accept Life, Take It As It Is? Stupid. The Means Of Doing Otherwise? Far From Our Having To Take It, It Is Life That Possesses Us And On Occasion Shuts Our Mouths.

Big Tears Of Frustration And Exhaustion Were Streaming Down His Cheeks. But Because Of All The Wrinkles, They Weren't Dripping Off. They Spread Out And Ran Together Again, Leaving A Watery Film Over His Ruined Face.

[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!

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

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

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.

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.

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

Common Knowledge

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

Do Not Be Surprised. I Do Not Like Writers And I Cannot Stand Their Lies. They Speak So As Not To Listen To Themselves Speak. If They Did Listen, They Would Know That They Are Nothing And Then They Would No Longer Be Able To Speak.

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.

In Normal Times All Of Us Know, Whether Consciously Or Not, That There Is No Love Which Can't Be Bettered; Nevertheless, We Reconcile Ourselves More Or Less Easily To The Fact That Ours Has Never Risen Above The Average.

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.

We Call First Truths Those We Discover After All The Others.

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

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

Absurd- That Is The Light Mind That Establishes Its Own Borders.

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

... 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.

The Mistake That Men Make Is That They Do Not Believe In Theater. Otherwise, They Would Know That Every Man Is Allowed To Play Thecelestial Tragedies And To Become God. All He Has To Do Is Harden His Heart.

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

Our Reason Has Driven All Away. Alone At Last, We End Up Ruling Over A Desert.

We Turn Toward God Only To Obtain The Impossible.

There Is No Shame In Preferring Happiness.

To Govern Means To Pillage, As Everyone Knows.

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

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.

We Have Art In Order Not To Die Of Life.

Every Writer, Big Or Small, Needs To Say Or Write That The Genius Is Always Hissed At By His Contemporaries. Naturally, This Is Not True, It Happens Only Occasionally And Often By Chance. But This Need Within The Writer Is Enlightening.

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

Can One Be A Saint If God Does Not Exist? That Is The Only Concrete Problem I Know Of Today.

The Truth Is That Every Intelligent Man, As You Know, Dreams Of Being A Gangster And Of Ruling Over Society By Force Alone. As It Is Not So Easy As The Detective Novels Might Lead One To Believe, One Generally Relies On Politics And Joins The Cruelest Party.what Does It Matter, After All, If By Humiliating One's Mind One Succeeds In Dominating Every One? I Discovered In Myself Sweet Dreams Of Oppression.

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

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.

Truth, Like Light, Blinds. Falsehood, On The Contrary, Is A Beautiful Twilight That Enhances Every Object.

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

Seeking What Is True Is Not Seeking What Is Desirable.

Without Freedom, No Art; Art Lives Only On The Restraints It Imposes On Itself, And Dies Of All Others.

What Doesn't Kill You Make You Stronger And Stronger

Makes You Stronger

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

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

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

Thus Each Of Us Had To Be Content To Live Only For The Day, Alone Under The Vast Indifference Of The Sky.

To Remain A Man In Today's World, One Must Have Not Only Unfailing Energy And Unwavering Intensity, One Must Also Have A Little Luck.

Too Many Have Dispensed With Generosity In Order To Practice Charity.

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.

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

... There Are Two Types Of Happiness And I Have Chosen That Of The Murderers. For I Am Happy. There Was A Time When I Thought I Had Reached The Limit Of Distress. Beyond That Limit, There Is A Sterile And Magnificent Happiness.

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

In Order To Exist, Man Must Rebel.

A Lot Of Jobs Don't Allow You To Be Who You Are. There Is Dignity In Work Only When It Is Work Freely Accepted.

You Know Very Well That I No Longer Think. I Am Far Too Intelligent For That.

I Realized Then That A Man Who Had Lived Only One Day Could Easily Live For A Hundred Years In Prison. He Would Have Enough Memories To Keep Him From Being Bored

Once Crime Was As Solitary As A Cry Of Protest; Now It Is As Universal As Science. Yesterday It Was Put On Trial; Today It Determines The Law.

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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

... 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.

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

A True Masterpiece Does Not Tell Everything.

For The First Time, The First, I Laid My Heart Open To The Benign Indifference Of The Universe. To Feel It So Like Myself, Indeed So Brotherly, Made Me Realize That I'd Been Happy, And That I Was Happy Still.

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.

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

At The Heart Of All Beauty Lies Something Inhuman.

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.

We Used To Wonder Where War Lived, What It Was That Made It So Vile. And Now We Realize That We Know Where It Lives... Inside Ourselves.

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

All Modern Revolutions Have Ended In A Reinforcement Of The Power Of The State.

The Kingdom Of Heaven Will, In Fact, Appear On Earth , But It Will Be Ruled Over By Men A Mere Handful To Begin With, Who Will Be The Cassars, Because They Were The First To Understand And Later, With Time, By All Men.

All Healthy Men Have Thought Of Their Own Suicide

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

All Great Deeds And All Great Thoughts Have A Ridiculous Beginning. Great Works Are Often Born On A Street Corner Or In A Restaurant's Revolving Door.

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

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

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