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The Reasoning Is Classic In Its Clarity. If God Does Not Exist, Kirilov Is God. If God Does Not Exist, Kirilov Must Kill Himself. Kirilov Must Therefore Kill Himself To Become God. That Logic Is Absurd, But It Is What Is Needed.

-Albert Camus

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The Reasoning Is Classic

Albert Camus

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The Reasoning Is Classic In Its Clarity. If God Does Not Exist, Kirilov Is God. If God Does Not Exist, Kirilov Must Kill Himself. Kirilov Must Therefore Kill Himself To Become God. That Logic Is Absurd, But It Is What Is Needed.

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Fiction Is The Lie Through Which We Tell The Truth.

Telling The Truth

I See Many People Die Because They Judge That Life Is Not Worth Living. I See Others Paradoxically Getting Killed For The Ideas Or Illusions That Give Them A Reason For Living (what Is Called A Reason For Living Is Also An Excellent Reason For Dying). I Therefore Conclude That The Meaning Of Life Is The Most Urgent Of Questions.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Happiness And Love

We Turn Toward God Only To Obtain The Impossible.

All Healthy Men Have Thought Of Their Own Suicide

I Looked Up At The Mass Of Signs And Stars In The Night Sky And Laid Myself Open For The First Time To The Benign Indifference Of The World.

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.

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

I Spent A Long Time Looking At Faces, Drinking In Smiles. Am I Happy Or Unhappy? It’s Not A Very Important Question. I Live With Such Frenzied Intensity. Things And People Are Waiting For Me, And Doubtless I Am Waiting For Them And Desiring Them With All My Strength And Sadness. But, Here, I Earn The Right To Be Alive By Silence And By Secrecy. The Miracle Of Not Having To Talk About Oneself.

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.

... We Need The Sweet Pain Of Anticipation To Tell Us We Are Really Alive.

Existence Is Illusory And It Is Eternal.

The Truth Is That Everyone Is Bored, And Devotes Himself To Cultivating Habits.

To Two Men Living The Same Number Of Years, The World Always Provides The Same Sum Of Experiences. It Is Up To Us To Be Conscious Of Them.

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

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

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

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

For Those Of Us Who Have Been Thrown Into Hell, Mysterious Melodies And The Torturing Images Of A Vanished Beauty Will Always Bring Us, In The Midst Of Crime And Folly, The Echo Of That Harmonious Insurrection Which Bears Witness, Throughout The Centuries, To The Greatness Of Humanity.

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

The World In Which We Were Called To Exist Was An Absurd World, And There Was No Other In Which We Could Take Refuge.

At The Heart Of All Beauty Lies Something Inhuman.

A Novel Is Never Anything But A Philosophy Expressed In Images. And In A Good Novel The Philosophy Has Disappeared Into The Images.

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.

His Own Faith, However, Was Not Lacking In Virtues Since It Consisted In Acknowledging Obscurely That He Would Be Granted Much Without Ever Deserving Anything.

It Is Easier To Kill What We Do Not Know.

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?

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

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

Great Novelists Are Philosopher Novelists - That Is, The Contrary Of Thesis-writers.

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.

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

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

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.

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

What, Then, Is That Incalculable Feeling That Deprives The Mind Of The Sleep Necessary To Life? A World That Can Be Explained Even With Bad Reasons Is A Familiar World. But, On The Other Hand, In A Universe Suddenly Divested Of Illusions 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. This Divorce Between Man And His Life, The Actor And His Setting, Is Properly The Feeling Of Absurdity.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Live And Let Live

What Doesn't Kill You Make You Stronger And Stronger

Makes You Stronger

History, As An Entirety, Could Only Exist In The Eyes Of An Observer Outside It And Outside The World. History Only Exists, In The Final Analysis, For God.

We Are Condemned To Live Together.

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

The Absurd Is Sin Without God.

The Human Heart Has A Tiresome Tendency To Label As Fate Only What Crushes It. But Happiness Likewise, In Its Way, Is Without Reason, Since It Is Inevitable.

On The Whole, Men Are More Good Than Bad; That, However, Isn't The Real Point. But They Are More Or Less Ignorant, And It Is This That We Call Vice Or Virtue; The Most Incorrigible Vice Being That Of An Ignorance That Fancies It Knows Everything And Therefore Claims For Itself The Right To Kill. The Soul Of The Murderer Is Blind; And There Can Be No True Goodness Nor True Love Without The Utmost Clear-sightedness.

You Cannot Create Experience. You Must Undergo It.

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

The Soul Of A Murderer Is Blind

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.

The Primordial Sea Indefatigably Repeats The Same Words And Casts Up The Same Astonished Beings On The Same Sea-shore.

Men And Women Consume One Another Rapidly In What Is Called "the Act Of Love," Or Else Settle Down To A Mild Habit Of Conjugality. We Seldom Find A Mean Between These Two Extremes.

We Get Into The Habit Of Living Before Acquiring The Habit Of Thinking.

She Was Waiting, But She Didn't Know For What. She Was Aware Only Of Her Solitude, And Of The Penetrating Cold, And Of A Greater Weight In The Region Of Her Heart.

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

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.

Why Should It Be Essential To Love Rarely In Order To Love Much?

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

When A War Breaks Out, People Say: "it's Too Stupid; It Can't Last Long." But Though A War May Well Be "too Stupid," That Doesn't Prevent Its Lasting. Stupidity Has A Knack Of Getting Its Way; As We Should See If We Were Not Always So Much Wrapped Up In Ourselves.

Since The Order Of The World Is Shaped By Death, Mightn't It Be Better For God If We Refuse To Believe In Him, And Struggle With All Our Might Against Death Without Raising Our Eyes Towards The Heaven Where He Sits In Silence?

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

There Is Only One Class Of Men, The Privileged Class

The Realization That Life Is Absurd And Cannot Be An End, But Only A Beginning. This Is A Truth Nearly All Great Minds Have Taken As Their Starting Point. It Is Not This Discovery That Is Interesting, But Theconsequences And Rules Of Action Drawn From It.

Having Money Is A Way Of Being Free Of Money.

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.

We're All Special Cases.

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

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

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

It Is Impossible To Give A Clear Account Of The World, But Art Can Teach Us To Reproduce It-just As The World Reproduces Itself In The Course Of Its Eternal Gyrations. The Primordial Sea Indefatigably Repeats The Same Words And Casts Up The Same Astonished Beings On The Same Sea-shore.

Peace Is The Only Battle Worth Waging.

There Is No Love Of Life Without Despair Of Life.

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.

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

Precious Stones

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

In That Night Alive With Signs And Stars, I Opened Myself To The Gentle Indifference Of The World. Finding It So Much Like Myself--like A Brother, Really--i Felt That I Had Been Happy And That I Was Happy Again.

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

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.

The Temptation Shared By All Forms Of Intelligence: Cynicism.

The End Of Their Passion Consists Of Loving Uselessly At The Moment When It Is Pointless.

Happiness And Love

There Are Causes Worth Dying For, But None Worth Killing For.

Every Artist Preserves Deep Within Him A Single Source From Which, Throughout His Lifetime, He Draws What He Is, And What He Says. When The Source Dries Up, The Work Withers And Crumbles.

Outside Of That Single Fatality Of Death, Everything, Joy Or Happiness, Is Liberty.

It Was Previously A Question Of Finding Out Whether Or Not Life Had To Have A Meaning To Be Lived. It Now Becomes Clear On The Contrary That It Will Be Lived All The Better If It Has No Meaning

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

A Loveless World Is A Dead World.

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.

In Italian Museums Are Sometimes Found Little Painted Screens That The Priest Used To Hold In Front Of The Face Of Condemned Men To Hide The Scaffold From Them.

Truth And Freedom, Having Few Lovers, Are Demanding Mistresses.

It Should Be Pointed Out For Our Own Guidance In The West That The Continual Signing Of Manifestoes And Protests Is One Of The Surest Ways Of Undermining The Efficacy And Dignity Of The Intellectual. There Exists A Permanent Blackmail That We All Know And That We Must Have The Often Solitary Courage To Resist.

All That I Know Most Surely About Morality And Obligations I Owe To Football.

There Is Scarcely Any Passion Without Struggle.

Yes, Everything Is Simple. It's People Who Complicate Things.

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

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

The Absurd Is Lucid Reason Noting Its Limits.

No Excuses Ever, For Anyone; That Is My Principle At The Outset. I Deny The Good Intention, The Respectable Mistake, The Indiscretion, The Extenuating Circumstance. With Me There Is No Giving Of Absolution Or Blessing.

The Tragedy Is Not That We Are Alone, But That We Cannot Be. At Times I Would Give Anything In The World To No Longer Be Connected By Anything To This Universe Of Men.

Rebellion Cannot Exist Without A Strange Form Of Love.

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.

A Guilty Conscience Needs To Confess. A Work Of Art Is A Confession.

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.

If Nietzsche Is Correct, That To Shame A Man Is To Kill Him, Then Any Honest Attempt At Autobiography Will Be An Act Of Self-destruction.

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

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

The Most Knowledgeable Person In One Domain May Be The Most Ignorant In Another.

Knowledgeable Person

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.

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

Somebody Has To Have The Last Word. If Not, Every Argument Could Be Opposed By Another And We'd Never Be Done With It.

[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!

There Are Means That Cannot Be Excused. And I Should Like To Be Able To Love My Country And Still Love Justice. I Don't Want Just Any Greatness For It, Particularly A Greatness Born Of Blood And Falsehood. I Want To Keep It Alive By Keeping Justice Alive.

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

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

Am Well. Thinking Of You Always. Love

Thinking Of You

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

Experience Yourself

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

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

Live In The Present

I Am Alive Again, Now That I Can No Longer Stand To Live.

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

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

Without Culture, And The Relative Freedom It Implies, Society, Even When Perfect, Is But A Jungle. This Is Why Any Authentic Creation Is A Gift To The Future.

Art And Culture

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

There Is No Shame In Preferring Happiness.

The Only Way To Deal With An Unfree World Is To Become So Absolutely Free That Your Very Existence Is An Act Of Rebellion.

From The Moment Absurdity Is Recognized, It Becomes A Passion, The Most Harrowing Of All. But Whether Or Not One Can Live With One's Passions, Whether Or Not One Can Accept Their Law, Which Is To Burn The Heart They Simultaneously Exalt - That Is The Whole Question.

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

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

Indeed, Men Never Know How To Love. Nothing Satisfies Them. All They Know Is To Dream, To Imagine New Duties, To Look For New Countries And New Homes. While We Women, We Know That We Must Hasten To Love, To Share The Same Bed, Hold Hands, And Fear Absence. When We Women Love, We Dream Of Nothing.

At That Moment He Knew What His Mother Was Thinking, And That She Loved Him. But He Knew, Too, That To Love Someone Means Relatively Little; Or, Rather, That Love Is Never Strong Enough To Find The Words Befitting It. Thus He And His Mother Would Always Love Each Other Silently. And One Day She--or He--would Die, Without Ever, All Their Lives Long, Having Gone Farther Than This By Way Of Making Their Affection Known.

We Must Admit That Today Conformity Is On The Left. To Be Sure, The Right Is Not Brilliant. But The Left Is In Complete Decadence, A Prisoner Of Words, Caught In Its Own Vocabulary, Capable Merely Of Stereotyped Replies, Constantly At A Loss When Faced With Truth, From Which It Nevertheless Claimed To Derive Its Laws. The Left Is Schizophrenic And Needs Doctoring Through Pitiless Self-criticism, Exercise Of The Heart, Close Reasoning, And A Little Modesty.

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.

Human Rebellion Ends In Metaphysical Revolution. It Progresses From Appearances To Acts, From The Dandy To The Revolutionary.

To Know Oneself, One Should Assert Oneself.

The Revolutionary Government Was Required To Become The Government Of The War.

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

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.

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

Fate Is Not In Man But Around Him

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

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.

Working Conditions

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.

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

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

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

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.

Although It Was The Middle Of Winter, I Finally Realized That, Within Me, Summer Was Inextinguishable.

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

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

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.

There's The Risk Of Being Loved...and That Would Keep Me From Being Happy.

I Don't Want To Represent Man As He Is, But Only As He Might Be.

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.

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.

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.

No Code Of Ethics And No Effort Are Justifiable A Priori In The Face Of The Cruel Mathematics That Command Our Condition.

He's Incapable Of Suffering For A Long Time, Or Being Happy For A Long Time. Which Means That He's Incapable Of Anything Really Worth While.

Believe Me There Is No Such Thing As Great Suffering, Great Regret, Great Memory....everything Is Forgotten, Even A Great Love. That's What's Sad About Life, And Also What's Wonderful About It. There Is Only A Way Of Looking At Things, A Way That Comes To You Every Once In A While. That's Why It's Good To Have Had Love In Your Life After All, To Have Had An Unhappy Passion- It Gives You An Alibi For The Vague Despairs We All Suffer From.

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

If There Is A Soul, It Is A Mistake To Believe That It Is Given To Us Fully Created. It Is Created Here, Throughout A Whole Life. And Living Is Nothing Else But That Long And Painful Bringing Forth.

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

The Best Revenge You Can Have On Intellectuals Is To Be Madly Happy.

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

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

Some Other Memories Of The Funeral Have Stuck In My Mind. The Old Boy’s Face, For Instance, When He Caught Up With Us For The Last Time, Just Outside The Village. His Eyes Were Streaming With Tears, Of Exhaustion Or Distress, Or Both Together. But Because Of The Wrinkles They Couldn’t Flow Down. They Spread Out, Crisscrossed, And Formed A Smooth Gloss On The Old, Worn Face.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Beauty, No Doubt, Does Not Make Revolutions. But A Day Will Come When Revolutions Will Have Need Of Beauty.

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.

What Is A Rebel? A Man Who Says No.

Everything Considered, A Determined Soul Will Always Manage.

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.

Beginning To Think Is Beginning To Be Undermined. Society Has But Little Connection With Such Beginnings. The Worm Is In Man's Heart. That Is Where It Must Be Sought. One Must Follow And Understand This Fatal Game That Leads From Lucidity In The Face Of Existence To Flight From Light.

Life Is Meaningless, But Worth Living, Provided You Recognize It's Meaningless.

There Is Nothing Abstract About Pain. It Is Specific, It Is Real, And, When It Is Intense, It Is World Destroying.

In Holland, Everyone Is An Expert In Painting And In Tulips.

It Is Normal To Give Away A Little Of One's Life In Order Not To Lose It All.

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.

La Ve Rite , Comme La Lumie' Re, Aveugle. Le Mensonge, Au Contraire, Est Un Beau Cre Puscule Qui Met Chaque Objet En Valeur. Truth, Like Light, Blinds. A Lie, On The Contrary, Is A Beautiful Twilight Which Shows The Value Of Each Object.

I Hadn't Understood How Days Could Be Both Long And Short At The Same Time: Long To Live Through, Maybe, But So Drawn Out That They Ended Up Flowing Into One Another. They Lost Their Names. Only 'yesterday' And 'tomorrow' Still Had Any Meaning For Me.

Happiness And The Absurd Are Two Sons Of The Same Earth. They Are Inseparable. It Would Be A Mistake To Say That Happiness Necessarily Springs From The Absurd Discovery. It Happens As Well That The Felling Of The Absurd Springs From Happiness. "i Conclude That All Is Well," Says Oedipus, And That Remark Is Sacred. It Echoes In The Wild And Limited Universe Of Man. It Teaches That All Is Not, Has Not Been, Exhausted. It Drives Out Of This World A God Who Had Come Into It With Dissatisfaction And A Preference For Futile Suffering. It Makes Of Fate A Human Matter, Which Must Be Settled Among Men.

We Have Art In Order Not To Die Of Life.

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

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

After Another Moment's Silence She Mumbled That I Was Peculiar, That That Was Probably Why She Loved Me But That One Day I Might Disgust Her For The Very Same Reason.

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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