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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.

-Albert Camus

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The Sense Of Doing

Albert Camus

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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.

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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.

But It's Not Easy. I've Been Thinking It Over For Years. While We Loved Each Other We Didn't Need Words To Make Ourselves Understood. But People Don't Love Forever. A Time Came When I Should Have Found The Words To Keep Her With Me, Only I Couldn't.

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?

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

The Greatness Of Man Lies In His Decision To Be Stronger Than His Condition.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Maybe She Had Become Tired Of Being The Girlfriend Of A Condemned Man. It Also Occured To Me That Maybe She Was Sick, Or Dead. These Things Happen. [...] Anyway, After That, Remembering Marie Meant Nothing To Me. That Seemed Perfectly Normal To Me, Since I Understood Very Well That People Would Forget Me When I Was Dead.

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

Live In The Present

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.

A Man Wants To Earn Money In Order To Be Happy, And His Whole Effort And The Best Of A Life Are Devoted To The Earning Of That Money. Happiness Is Forgotten; The Means Are Taken For The End.

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

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.

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

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

Truth Is Mysterious, Elusive, Always To Be Conquered. Liberty Is Dangerous, As Hard To Live With As It Is Elating. We Must March Toward These Two Goals, Painfully But Resolutely, Certain In Advance Of Our Failings On So Long A Road.

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

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

I Feel Like Getting Married, Or Committing Suicide, Or Subscribing To L'illustration. Something Desperate, You Know.

At The Heart Of All Beauty Lies Something Inhuman.

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

Decisions You Make

All I Maintain Is That On This Earth There Are Pestilences And There Are Victims, And It's Up To Us, So Far As Possible, Not To Join Forces With The Pestilences. That May Sound Simple To The Point Of Childishness; I Can't Judge If It's Simple, But I Know It's True.

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

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.

But Above All, In Order To Be, Never Try To Seem.

But What Does It Mean, The Plague? It's Life, That's All.

Yes, I'm Happy, In Human Terms.

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

There Is Scarcely Any Passion Without Struggle.

One Cannot Be A Part-time Nihilist.

“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.”

Art Does Not Tolerate Reason.

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.

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.

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

Slave Camps Under The Flag Of Freedom, Massacres Justified By Philanthropy Or The Taste Of The Superhuman, Cripple Judgment. On The Day When Crime Puts On The Apparel Of Innocence, Through A Curious Reversal Peculiar To Our Age, It Is Innocence That Is Called On To Justify Itself. The Purpose Of This Essay Is To Accept And Study That Strange Challenge.

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.

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

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

We Get Into The Habit Of Living Before Acquiring The Habit Of Thinking. In That Race Which Daily Hastens Us Towards Death, The Body Maintains Its Irreparable Lead.

For A Man Who Loves Power, Competition From The Gods Is Annoying. I Have Done Away With That. I Have Proven To These Illusory Godsthat A Man, If He Has The Will, Can Practice, Without Any Apprenticeship, Their Ridiculous Trade.

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.

You Cannot Create Experience. You Must Undergo It.

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

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

What The World Requires Of The Christians Is That They Should Continue To Be Christians.

Liberty Is Dangerous.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Because There Is Nothing Here Than Invites Us To Cherish Unhappy Lovers. Nothing Is More Vain Than To Die For Love. What We Ought To Do Is Live.

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.

In Short, They Were Gambling On Their Luck, And Luck Is Not To Be Coerced.

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.

Even When One Sits In The Prisoner's Dock, It Is Interesting To Hear Talk About Oneself.

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

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.

All Systems Of Morality Are Based On The Idea That An Action Has Consequences That Legitimize Or Cancel It. A Mind Imbued With The Absurd Merely Judges That Those Consequences Must Be Considered Calmly.

Actions Have Consequences

Maman Died Today. Or Yesterday Maybe, I Don't Know. I Got A Telegram From The Home: 'mother Deceased. Funeral Tomorrow. Faithfully Yours.' That Doesn't Mean Anything. Maybe It Was Yesterday.

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.

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

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

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

The Realization That Life Is Absurd Cannot Be An End, But Only A Beginning.

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

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

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

There Is A Life And There Is A Death, And There Are Beauty And Melancholy Between.

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

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

Man Cannot Do Without Beauty, And This Is What Our Era Pretends To Want To Disregard.

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.

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

I Would Rather Not Have Upset Him, But I Couldn't See Any Reason To Change My Life. Looking Back On It, I Wasn't Unhappy. When I Was A Student, I Had Lots Of Ambitions Like That. But When I Had To Give Up My Studies I Learned Very Quickly That None Of It Really Mattered.

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.

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.

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

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

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

At A Certain Level Of Suffering Or Injustice No One Can Do Anything For Anyone. Pain Is Solitary.

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

One Must Place One's Principles In Big Things. For The Small, Graciousness Will Suffice.

A Man Without Ethics Is A Wild Beast Loosed Upon This World.

Every Revolutionary Ends Up Either By Becoming An Oppressor Or A Heretic.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

To Insure The Adoration Of A Theorem For Any Length Of Time, Faith Is Not Enough, A Police Force Is Needed As Well.

Law Enforcement

Yes, I Know What Passion Would Fill Me With All Its Power. Before, I Was Too Young. I Got In The Way. Now I Know That Acting And Loving And Suffering Is Living, Of Course, But It’s Only Living Insofar As You Can Be Transparent And Accept Your Fate, Like The Unique Reflection Of A Rainbow Of Joys And Passions Which Is The Same For Everyone.

My Life Was Lucky So That I Met, I Loved (and Disappointed) Only Outstanding People.

[paris] Is Dirty. It Has Pigeons And Black Yards. The People Have White Skin.

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

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

No One Who Lives In The Sunlight Of Gratitude That Things Aren't Worse Makes A Failure Of His Or Her Life.

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

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.

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

To Create Is Likewise To Give A Shape To One's Fate

But Too Many People Now Climb Onto The Cross Merely To Be Seen From A Greater Distance, Even If They Have To Trample Somewhat On The One Who Has Been There So Long.

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

Betrayal Answers Betrayal, The Mask Of Love Is Answered By The Disappearance Of Love.

Happiness And Love

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.

I Felt The Urge To Reassure Him That I Was Like Everybody Else, Just Like Everybody Else.

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

How Do You Put Everyone In The Pool, So You Have The Right To Dry Yourself In The Sun?

Ah Cher Ami, How Poor In Invention Men Are! They Are They Always Think One Commits Suicide For A Reason. But It's Quite Possible To Commit Suicide For Two Reasons. No, That Never Occurs To Them. So What's The Good Of Dying Intentionally, Of Sacrificing Yourself To The Idea You Want People To Have Of You? Once You Are Dead, They Will Take Advantage Of It To Attribute Idiotic Or Vulgar Motives To Your Action. Martyrs, Cher Ami, Must Choose Between Being Forgotten, Mocked, Or Made Use Of. As For Being Understood--never!

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.

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

A Régime [nazism] Which Invented A Biological Foreign Policy Was Obviously Acting Against Its Own Best Interests. But At Least It Obeyed Its Own Particular Logic.

But Who Would Dare Condemn Me In This World With No Judges, Where No One Is Innocent!

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

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.

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

Youth Is Above All A Collection Of Possibilities.

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

There Is No Frontier Between Being And Appearing.

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

Turbulent Childhood, Adolescent Daydreams In The Drone Of The Bus's Motor, Mornings, Unspoiled Girls, Beaches, Young Muscles Always At The Peak Of Their Effort, Evening's Slight Anxiety In A Sixteen-year-old-heart, Lust For Life, Fame, And Ever The Same Sky Through The Years, Unfailing In Strength And Light, Itself Insatiable, Consuming One By One Over A Period Of Months The Victims Stretched Out In The Form Of Crosses On The Beach At The Deathlike Hour Of Noon.

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

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.

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

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.

This Very Heart Which Is Mine Will Forever Remain Indefinable To Me. Between The Certainty I Have Of My Existence And The Content I Try To Give To That Assurance, The Gap Will Never Be Filled. Forever I Shall Be A Stranger To Myself.

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.

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.

Existence Is Illusory And It Is Eternal.

The Need To Be Right Is The Sign Of A Vulgar Mind.

Lucifer Also Has Died With God, And From His Ashes Has Arisen A Spiteful Demon Who Does Not Even Understand The Object Of His Venture.

Men Are Convinced Of Your Arguments, Your Sincerity, And The Seriousness Of Your Efforts Only By Your Death.

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

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

Without Freedom There Is No Art.

We Are Living In The Era Of Premeditation And The Perfect Crime. Our Criminals Are No Longer Helpless Children Who Could Plead Love As Their Excuse. On The Contrary, They Are Adults And The Have The Perfect Alibi: Philosophy, Which Can Be Used For Any Purpose - Even For Transforming Murderers Into Judges.

What Is A Rebel? A Man Who Says No.

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.

You Will Never Be Able To Experience Everything. So, Please, Do Poetical Justice To Your Soul And Simply Experience Yourself.

Experience Yourself

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

To Govern Means To Pillage, As Everyone Knows.

I Am Too Far Away From What I Love And My Distance Is Without Remedy.

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.

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.

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

Art And Revolt Will Die Only With The Last Man.

Murder Is Terribly Exhausting.

Obstinacy Alone Is Not A Virtue.

The Slave And Those Whose Present Life Is Miserable And Who Can Find No Consolation In The Heavens Are Assured That At Least The Future Belongs To Them. The Future Is The Only Kind Of Property That The Masters Willingly Concede To The Slaves.

Likewise And During Every Day Of An Unillustrious Life, Time Carries Us. But A Moment Always Comes When We Have To Carry It.

Where There Is No Hope, We Must Invent It.

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.

Utopia Is That Which Is In Contradiction With Reality.

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.

Happiness Implied A Choice, And Within That Choice A Concerted Will, A Lucid Desire.

Just As All Thought, And Primarily That Of Non-signification, Signifies Something, So There Is No Art That Has No Signification.

Meaning Of Life

Life Has No Meaning

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

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

Thus, In A Middle Course Between These Heights And Depths, They Drifted Through Life Rather Than Lived, The Prey Of Aimless Days And Sterile Memories, Like Wandering Shadows That Could Have Acquired Substance Only By Consenting To Root Themselves In The Solid Earth Of Their Distress.

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

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

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

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.

I Had Only A Little Time Left And I Didn't Want To Waste It On God.

The Myth Of Unlimited Production Brings War In Its Train As Inevitably As Clouds Announce A Storm.

We All Have A Weakness For Beauty.

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.

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

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.

I Felt That I Had Been Happy And That I Was Happy Again. For Everything To Be Consummated, For Me To Feel Less Alone, I Had Only To Wish That There Be A Large Crowd Of Spectators The Day Of My Execution And That They Greet Me With Cries Of Hate.

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

Precious Stones

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.

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.

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.

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

No Longer Were There Individual Destinies; Only A Collective Destiny, Made Of Plague And Emotions Shared By All.

It Occurred To Me That Anyway One More Sunday Was Over That Maman Was Buried Now, That I Was Going Back To Work, And That, Really, Nothing Had Changed.

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

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.

All Healthy Men Have Thought Of Their Own Suicide

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.

There Is Only One Class Of Men, The Privileged Class

But 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 Seas, Rains, Necessity, Desire, The Struggle Against Death--these Are Things That Unite Us All. We Resemble One Another In What We See Together, In What We Suffer Together. Dreams Change From Individual, But The Reality Of The World Is Common To Us All. Striving Towards Realism Is Therefore Legitimate, For It Is Basically Related To The Artistic Adventure.

The Absurd Has Meaning Only In So Far As It Is Not Agreed To.

Absolute Justice Is Achieved By The Suppression Of All Contradiction, Therefore It Destroys Freedom.

A Fate Is Not A Punishment.

Truth, Like Light, Is Blinding. Lies, On The Other Hand, Are A Beautiful Dusk, Which Enhances The Value Of Each Object.

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