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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.

-Albert Camus

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The Only Way Out

Albert Camus

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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.

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There Exists An Obvious Fact That Seems Utterly Moral: Namely, That A Man Is Always Prey To His Truths. Once He Has Admitted Them, He Cannot Free Himself From Them. One Has To Pay Something. A Man Who Has Become Conscious Of The Absurd Is Forever Bound To It.

Nothing In The World Is Worth Turning One's Back On What One Loves.

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

In Order To Speak About All And To All, One Has To Speak Of What All Know And Of The Reality Common To Us All. The Sea, Rains, Necessity, Desire, The Struggle Against Death... These Are Things That Unite Us All.

The Real Passion Of The Twentieth Century Is Servitude.

More And More, Revolution Has Found Itself Delivered Into The Hands Of Its Bureaucrats And Doctrinaires On The One Hand, And To The Enfeebled And Bewildered Masses On The Other.

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?

Camus Himself Described This Work As 'an Attempt To Understand The Time I Live In'.

After A Short Silence The Doctor Raised Himself A Little In His Chair And Asked If Tarrou Had An Idea Of The Path To Follow For Attaining Peace. "yes, He Replied. "the Path Of Sympathy.

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

Creating Is Living Doubly. The Groping, Anxious Quest Of A Proust, His Meticulous Collecting Of Flowers, Of Wallpapers, And Of Anxieties, Signifies Nothing Else.

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

Life Can Be Magnificent And Overwhelming -- That Is The Whole Tragedy. Without Beauty, Love, Or Danger It Would Almost Be Easy To Live.

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.

And For All His Life It Would Be Kindness And Love That Made Him Cry, Never Pain Or Persecution, Which On The Contrary Only Reinforced His Spirit And His Resolution.

Don't Let Them Tell Us Stories.

“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.”

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.

In Every Rebellion Is To Be Found The Metaphysical Demand For Unity, The Impossibility Of Capturing It, And The Construction Of A Substitute Universe.

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.

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

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.

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

Your Success And Happiness Are Forgiven You Only If You Generously Consent To Share Them. But To Be Happy It Is Essential Not To Be Too Concerned With Others. Consequently, There Is No Escape. Happy And Judged, Or Absolved And Wretched.

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.

Freedom Is Nothing But A Chance To Be Better.

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

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.

One Plays At Being Immortal And After A Few Weeks One Doesn't Even Know Whether Or Not One Can Hang On Till The Next Day.

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.

You Will Always Win If You Make An Effort, No Matter How Much. However, If You Failed It Means You Were Too Lazy.

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.

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.

Don't Walk Behind Me; I May Not Lead. Don't Walk In Front Of Me; I May Not Follow. Just Walk Beside Me And Be My Friend.

Peace Is The Only Battle Worth Waging.

Happiness Too Is Inevitable.

It Is In The Thick Of Calamity That One Gets Hardened To The Truth - In Other Words, To Silence.

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.

Thinking Is Learning All Over Again How To See, Directing One's Consciousness, Making Of Every Image A Privileged Place.

There Is Scarcely Any Passion Without Struggle.

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.

We Have Art In Order Not To Die Of Life.

Everything Is True, And Nothing Is True!

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

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

There Are More Things To Admire In Men Than To Despise.

Don't Wait For The Last Judgment - It Takes Place Every Day.

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

Live And Let Live

All I Know Of Morality I Learned From Football

What Must Be Remembered In Any Case Is That Secret Complicity That Joins The Logical And The Everyday To The Tragic.

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

You Always Get Exaggerated Notions Of Things You Don't Know Anything About.

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.

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

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

Truth Is Not A Virtue, But A Passion. It Is Never Charitable.

There Is But One Freedom, To Put Oneself Right With Death. After That Everything Is Possible.

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.

The World Is Never Quiet, Even Its Silence Eternally Resounds With The Same Notes, In Vibrations Which Escape Our Ears. As For Those That We Perceive, They Carry Sounds To Us, Occasionally A Chord, Never A Melody.

Everybody Knows Life Isn't Worth Living.

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.

For There Is Merely Bad Luck In Not Being Loved; There Is Misfortune In Not Loving.

I Was Assailed By Memories Of A Life That Wasn't Mine Anymore, But One In Which I'd Found The Simplest And Most Lasting Joys.

Utopia Is That Which Is In Contradiction With Reality.

There Is A Terrible Emptiness In Me, An Indifference That Hurts.

Have You No Hope At All? And Do You Really Live With The Thought That When You Die, You Die, And Nothing Remains?" "yes," I Said.

No Matter How The Sun Shone, The Sea Held Forth No More Promises.

Nihilism Is Not Only Despair And Negation, But Above All The Desire To Despair And To Negate.

Nobody Realizes That Some People Expend Tremendous Energy Merely To Be Normal.

The World Expects Of Christians That They Will Raise Their Voices So Loudly And Clearly And So Formulate Their Protest That Not Even The Simplest Man Can Have The Slightest Doubt About What They Are Saying. Further, The World Expects Of Christians That They Will Eschew All Fuzzy Abstractions And Plant Themselves Squarely In Front Of The Bloody Face Of History. We Stand In Need Of Folk Who Have Determined To Speak Directly And Unmistakably And Come What May, To Stand By What They Have Said.

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

I Opened Myself To The Gentle Indifference Of The World.

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

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

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

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 Most Elementary Form Of Rebellion, Paradoxically , Expresses An Aspiration For Order .

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.

Beginning To Think Is Beginning To Be Undermined.

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

One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy.

An Achievement Is A Bondage. It Obliges One To A Higher Achievement.

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.

A Man Devoid Of Hope And Conscious Of Being So Has Ceased To Belong To The Future.

Il Y A Dans Les Hommes Plus De Choses A' Admirer Que De Choses A' Me Priser. There Are More Things To Admire In People Than To Despise.

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.

Nothing Can Discourage The Appetite For Divinity In The Heart Of Man.

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

When I Was Young, I Expected From People More Than They Could Give: Neverending Friendship And Constant Excitement. Now I Expect Less Than They Can Actually Can Give: To Stay Close Silently. And Their Feelings, Friendship, Noble Deeds Always Seem Like A Miracle To Me: A True Grace.

I Know Simply That The Sky Will Last Longer Than I.

In Default Of Inexhaustible Happiness, Eternal Suffering Would At Least Give Us A Destiny. But We Do Not Even Have That Consolation, And Our Worst Agonies Come To An End One Day.

Mon Cher Ami, Let's Not Give Them Any Pretext, No Matter How Small, For Judging Us!!! Otherwise, We'll Be Left In Shreds. We Are Forced To Take The Same Precautions As The Animal Trainer. If, Before Going Into The Cage, He Has The Misfortune To Cut Himself While Shaving, What A Feast For The Wild Animals!!

I Felt As I Hadn't Felt For Ages. I Had A Foolish Desire To Burst Into Tears. For The First Time I'd Realized How All These People Loathed Me.

To Correct A Natural Indifference I Was Placed Half-way Between Misery And The Sun. Misery Kept Me From Believing That All Was Well Under The Sun, And The Sun Taught Me That History Wasn't Everything.

Methods Of Thought Which Claim To Give The Lead To Our World In The Name Of Revolution Have Become, In Reality, Ideologies Of Consent And Not Of Rebellion.

Poverty, First Of All Was Never A Misfortune For Me; It Was Radiant With Sunlight.. I Owe It To My Family, First Of All, Who Lacked Everything And Who Envied Practically Nothing.

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.

And Then Came Human Beings; Humans Wanted To Cling But There Was Nothing To Cling To.

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

It Is Immoral Not To Tell.

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

A Man Is More A Man Through The Things He Keeps To Himself Than Through Those He Says.

My Dear Friend, We Mustn't Give Them Even The Slightest Excuse To Judge Us! Otherwise, We End Up In Pieces.

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

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

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

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

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.

Here Lives A Free Man. Nobody Serves Him.

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.

Every Authentic Work Of Art Is A Gift Offered To The Future.

In The Past, The Poverty They Shared Had A Certain Sweetness About It. When The End Of The Day Came And They Would Eat Their Dinner In Silence With The Oil Lamp Between Them, There Was A Secret Joy In Such Simplicity, Such Retrenchment.

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.

Where Would His Torture Be, Indeed, If At Every Step The Hope Of Succeeding Upheld Him?

The Absurd Is Sin Without God.

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

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.

An Intense Feeling Carries With It Its Own Universe, Magnificent Or Wretched As The Case May Be.

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.

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

I Had The Whole Sky In My Eyes And It Was Blue And Gold.

And I Too, Felt Ready To Start Life All Over Again. It Was As If That Great Rush Of Anger Had Washed Me Clean, Emptied Me Of Hope, And, Gazing Up At The Dark Sky Spangled With Its Signs And Stars, For The First Time, The First, I Laid My Heart Open To The Benign Indifference Of The Universe.

The Harshest Winter Finds An Invincible Summer In Us.

Invincible Summer

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.

For The Existentials, Negation Is Their God. To Be Precise, That God Is Maintained Only Through The Negation Of Human Reason. But, Like Suicides, Gods Change With Men.

There Is Always A Philosophy For Lack Of Courage.

Proof Is Never Definitive, After All; One Has To Begin Again With Each New Person.

I Lived With The Only Continuity, Day To Day, Of The Me-me-me.

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

When The Soul Suffers Too Much, It Develops A Taste For Misfortune.

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

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?

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.

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

Travel, Which Is Like A Greater And A Graver Science, Brings Us Back To Ourselves.

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

We All Carry Within Us Places Of Exile, Our Crimes, Our Ravages. Our Task Is Not To Unleash Them On The World; It Is To Transform Them In Ourselves And Others.

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 Would Like To Be Able To Breathe— To Be Able To Love Her By Memory Or Fidelity. But My Heart Aches. I Love You Continuously, Intensely.

Yes, And When The Love Of Life Disappears, No Meaning Can Console Us.

This Divorce Between Man And His Life, The Actor And His Setting, Is Properly The Feeling Of Absurdity.

Absurdity Of Life

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

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

It's A Kind Of Spiritual Snobbery That Makes People Think They Can Be Happy Without Money.

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

The Purpose Of A Writer Is To Keep Civilization From Destroying Itself.

Men Die And They Are Not Happy.

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.

The Absurd Is The Essential Concept And The First Truth.

Where There Is No Hope, We Must Invent It.

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

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

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

We Are All Special Cases.

In A World That Has Ceased To Believe In Sin, The Artist Is Responsible For The Preaching.

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

There Always Comes A Time When One Must Choose Between Contemplation And Action. This Is Called Becoming A Man.

Great Ideas, It Has Been Said, Come Into The World As Gently As Doves. Perhaps Then, If We Listen Attentively, We Shall Hear Amid The Uproar Of Empires And Nations, A Faint Flutter Of Wings, The Gentle Stirring Of Life And Hope. Some Will Say That This Hope Lies In A Nation; Others In A Man. I Believe Rather That It Is Awakened, Revived, Nourished, By Millions Of Solitary Individuals Whose And Works Every Day Negate Frontiers And The Crudest Implications Of History.

But When A Man Has Had Only Four Hours' Sleep He Isn't Sentimental. He Sees Things As They Are: That Is To Say, He Sees Them In The Garish Light Of Justice; Hideous, Witless Justice.

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

Live In The Present

An Intellectual Is Someone Whose Mind Watches Itself.

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

You Cannot Create Experience. You Must Undergo It.

I Continue To Believe That This World Has No Ultimate Meaning. But I Know That Something In It Has A Meaning And That Is Man, Because He Is The Only Creature To Insist On Having One

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

Sometimes, From Beyond The Skycrapers, The Cry Of A Tugboat Finds You In Your Insomnia, And You Remember That This Desert Of Iron And Cement Is An Island.

Perhaps We Cannot Prevent This World From Being A World In Which Children Are Tortured. But We Can Reduce The Number Of Tortured Children.

When One Has Extensively Pondered About Men, As A Career Or As A Vocation, One Sometimes Feels Nostalgic For Primates. At Least They Do Not Have Ulterior Motives.

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

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

Realism Should Only Be The Means Of Expression Of Religious Genius... Or, At The Other Extreme, The Artistic Expressions Of Monkeys Which Are Quite Satisfied With Mere Imitation. In Fact, Art Is Never Realistic Though Sometimes It Is Tempted To Be. To Be Really Realistic A Description Would Have To Be Endless.

But Sometimes It Takes More Courage To Live Than To Shoot Yourself.

If One Could Only Say Just Once: 'this Is Clear', All Would Be Saved

Find Your Happiness In Yourself.

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

There Is But One Truly Serious Philosophical Problem And That Is Suicide.

Most Men Are Like Me. They Cannot Live In A Universe Where The Most Bizarre Thought Can In One Second Enter Into The Realm Of Reality--where, Most Often, It Does Enter, Like A Knife In A Heart.

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

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.

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.

At The Age Of 40, Having Ordered Meat Very Rare In Restaurants All His Life, He Realized He Actually Liked It Medium And Not At All Rare.

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

We Are Condemned To Live Together.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Happiness Is Not Everything And Men Have Their Duties. Mine Is To Find My Mother, A Homeland

Who Taught You All This, Doctor?" The Reply Came Promptly: "suffering.

The Work Of Art Is Born Of The Intelligence's Refusal To Reason The Concrete. It Marks The Triumph Of The Carnal.

The Artist Forges Himself To The Others, Midway Between The Beauty He Cannot Do Without And The Community He Cannot Tear Himself Away From. That Is Why True Artists Scorn Nothing: They Are Obliged To Understand Rather Than To Judge.

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

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

To Me, Art Is Not A Solitary Delight. It Is A Means Of Stirring The Greatest Number Of Men By Providing Them With A Privileged Image Of Our Common Joys And Woes.

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

... Unhappiness Is Like Marriage. We Believe We Chose It, But Then It Is Choosing Us. That Is How It Is, We Can Do Nothing About It.

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

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