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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.

-Albert Camus

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The World Expects Of

Albert Camus

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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.

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Fate Is Not In Man But Around Him

I Cling Like A Miser To The Freedom That Disappears As Soon As There Is An Excess Of Things.

One Dies If Necessary, One Breaks Rather Than Bending. But I Bend, Because I Continue To Love Myself.

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

... It Is True That I Do Not Respect [human Life] More Than I Respect My Own Life. And If It Is Easy For Me To Kill, That Is Because It Is Difficult For Me To Die.

That's The Way Man Is, Cher Monsieur. He Has Two Faces: He Can't Love Without Self-love.

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.

Art Does Not Tolerate Reason.

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.

It Is Not The World That Is Absurd, Nor Human Thought: The Absurd Arises When The Human Need To Understand Meets The Unreasonableness Of The World, When 'my Appetite For The Absolute And For Unity' Meets 'the Impossibility Of Reducing This World To A Rational And Reasonable Principle.'

... Habit Starts At The Second Crime. At The First One, Something Is Ending.

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

Freedom Is Nothing But A Chance To Be Better.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

What More Ghastly Image Can Be Called Up Than That Of A Man Betrayed By His Body Who, Simply Because He Did Not Die In Time, Lives Out The Comedy While Awaiting The End, Face To Face With That God He Does Not Adore, Serving Him As He Served Life, Kneeling Before A Void And Arms Outstretched Toward A Heaven Without Eloquence That He Knows To Be Also Without Depth?

Every Ideology Is Contrary To Human Psychology.

If We Understood The Enigmas Of Life There Would Be No Need For Art.

I Know [my Label], In Any Case: A Double Face, A Charming Janus, And Underneath, The House Motto: "be Wary". On My Business Cards:"jean-baptiste Clamence, Actor".

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

If It Adapts Itself To What The Majority Of Our Society Wants, Art Will Be A Meaningless Recreation.

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.

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

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.

There Are Plagues, And There Are Victims, And It's The Duty Of Good Men Not To Join Forces With The Plagues.

...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.

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

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

The First Choice An Artist Makes Is Precisely To Be An Artist, And If He Chooses To Be An Artist It Is In Consideration Of What He Is Himself And Because Of A Certain Idea He Has Of Art

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

People Hasten To Judge In Order Not To Be Judged Themselves.

Any Country Where I Am Not Bored Is A Country That Teaches Me Nothing.

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

Capital Punishment Is The Most Premeditated Of Murders.

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

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

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

Live And Let Live

No Cause Justifies The Deaths Of Innocent People.

If God Did Not Exist, We Should Have To Invent Him. If God Did Exist, We Should Have To Abolish Him.

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.

Everybody Knows That Pestilences Have A Way Of Recurring In The World; Yet Somehow We Find It Hard To Believe In Ones That Crash Down On Our Heads From A Blue Sky.

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

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.

What Would Become Of The World If The Condemned Started To Confide Their Heartaches To The Executioners?

I Like People Who Dream Or Talk To Themselves Interminably; I Like Them, For They Are Double. They Are Here And Elsewhere.

The World I Live In Is Loathsome To Me, But I Feel One With The Men Who Suffer In It

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

We Have Art In Order Not To Die Of Life.

How Hard It Is, How Bitter It Is To Become A Man!

We Are Not So Mad As To Think That We Shall Create A World In Which Murder Will Not Occur. We Are Fighting For A World In Which Murder Will No Longer Be Legal.

Only The Sea, Murmurous Behind The Dingy Checkerboard Of Houses, Told Of The Unrest, The Precariousness, Of All Things In This World.

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

Absurdity Of Life

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

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.

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

True Debauchery Is Liberating Because It Creates No Obligations. In It You Possess Only Yourself, Hence It Remains The Favorite Pastime Of The Great Lovers Of Their Own Person.

In Our Well-policed Society We Recognize That An Illness Is Serious From The Fact That We Don't Dare Speak Of It Directly.

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.

Germany Collapsed As A Result Of Having Engaged In A Struggle For Empire With The Concepts Of Provincial Politics.

Art And Revolt Will Die Only With The Last Man.

Analysis Of Rebellion Leads At Least To The Suspicion That, Contrary To The Postulates Of Contemporary Thought, A Human Nature Does Exist, As The Greeks Believed. Why Rebel If There Is Nothing Permanent In Oneself Worth Preserving? ... Rebellion, Though Apparently Negative, Since It Creates Nothing, Is Profoundly Positive In That It Reveals The Part Of Man Which Must Always Be Defended.

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.

Existence Is Illusory And It Is Eternal.

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.

The Danger Of Lectures Is That They Create The Illusion Of Teaching For Teachers, And The Illusion Of Learning For Learners.

If We Believe In Nothing, If Nothing Has Any Meaning And If We Can Affirm No Values Whatsoever, Then Everything Is Possible And Nothing Has Any Importance.

Freedom Is Not Constituted Primarily Of Privileges But Of Responsibilities.

By Giving Too Much Importance To Fine Actions One May End By Paying An Indirect But Powerful Tribute To Evil, Because In So Doing One Implies That Such Fine Actions Are Only Valuable Because They Are Rare, And That Malice Or Indifference Are Far More Common Motives In The Actions Of Men.

Conscious Of Not Being Able To Separate Myself From My Time, I Have Decided To Become Part Of It.

Those Who Love, Friends And Lovers, Know That Love Is Not Only A Blinding Flash, But Also A Long And Painful Struggle In The Darkness For The Realization Of Definitive Recognition And Reconciliation.

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

There Is The Good And The Bad, The Great And The Low, The Just And The Unjust. I Swear To You That All That Will Never Change.

He Had Opened His Heart To The Sublime Indifference Of The Universe

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

A True Masterpiece Does Not Tell Everything.

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

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

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

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 Understood, By Dint Of Digging Into My Memories, That Modesty Helped Me To Shine, Humility Helped Me To Triumph And Virtue To Oppress.

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

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

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.

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

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 Is Scarcely Any Passion Without Struggle.

Life Continues, And Some Mornings, Weary Of The Noise, Discouraged By The Prospect Of The Interminable Work To Keep After, Sickened Also By The Madness Of The World That Leaps At You From The Newspaper, Finally Convinced That I Will Not Be Equal To It And That I Will Disappoint Everyone - All I Want To Do Is Sit Down And Wait For Evening. This Is What I Feel Like, And Sometimes I Yield To It.

Healthy People Have A Natural Skill Of Avoiding Feverish Eyes.

Freedom Is Not A Gift Received From The State Or Leader, But A Possession To Be Won Every Day By The Effort Of Each And The Union Of All.

The Act Of Love . . . Is A Confession. Selfishness Screams Aloud, Vanity Shows Off, Or Else True Generosity Reveals Itself.

Men Who Have Greatness Within Them Don't Go In For Politics.

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.

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

It Is Better For The Intellectual Not To Talk All The Time. To Begin With, It Would Exhaust Him, And, Above All, It Would Keep Him From Thinking. He Must Create If He Can, First And Foremost, Especially If His Creation Does Not Side-step The Problems Of His Time.

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?

The Act Of Love Is A Confession.

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

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

All Great Deeds And All Great Thoughts Have A Ridiculous Beginning.

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

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.

But - I Cannot Make A Choice. I Have My Own Sorrow, But I Suffer With Him, Too; I Share His Pain. I Understand All - That Is My Trouble.

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.

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

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

Heroism Is Accessible. Happiness Is More Difficult.

In Order To Exist, Man Must Rebel.

To Be Happy, We Must Not Be Too Concerned With Others.

The Day Of My Arrest I Was First Put In A Room Where There Were Already Several Other Prisoners, Most Of Them Arabs. They Laughed When They Saw Me. Then They Asked What I Was In For. I Said I'd Killed An Arab And They Were All Silent

There Is In Me An Anarchy And Frightful Disorder. Creating Makes Me Die A Thousand Deaths, Because It Means Making Order, And My Entire Being Rebels Against Order. But Without It I Would Die, Scattered To The Winds.

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

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.

Life Should Be Lived To The Point Of Tears

To Lose One's Life Is No Great Matter; When The Time Comes I'll Have The Courage To Lose Mine. But What's Intolerable Is To See One's Life Being Drained Of Meaning, To Be Told There's No Reason For Existing. A Man Can't Live Without Some Reason For Living.

It Is Immoral Not To Tell.

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.

One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy.

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

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

From The Evening Breeze To This Hand On My Shoulder, Everything Has Its Truth.

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

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

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

... Here, Where The Gaze Is Stopped Everywhere, The Whole Earth Is Designed So That The Face Turns Upward And The Gaze Implores. Oh! I Hate This World Where We Are Reduced To God.

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

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

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.

Men Are Never Convinced Of Your Reasons, Of Your Sincerity, Of The Seriousness Of Your Sufferings, Except By Your Death. So Long As You Are Alive, Your Case Is Doubtful; You Have A Right Only To Their Skepticism.

Peace Is The Only Battle Worth Waging.

We [raymond And Meursault] Stared At Each Other Without Blinking, And Everything Came To A Stop There Between The Sea, The Sand, And The Sun, And The Double Silence Of The Flute And The Water. It Was Then That I Realized That You Could Either Shoot Or Not Shoot.

I Shall Not, As Far As I Am Concerned, Try To Pass Myself Off As A Christian In Your Presence. I Share With You The Same Revulsion From Evil. But I Do Not Share Your Hope, And I Continue To Struggle Against This Universe In Which Children Suffer And Die.

Great Ideas Come Into The World As Gently As Doves.

In The Depths Of Winter, I Finally Learned That Within Me There Lay An Invincible Summer.

I Don't Want To Be A Genius-i Have Enough Problems Just Trying To Be A Man.

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

The Harshest Winter Finds An Invincible Summer In Us.

Invincible Summer

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.

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

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.

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

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

In Order To Exist, Man Must Rebel, But Rebellion Must Respect The Limits That It Discovers In Itself - Limits Where Minds Meet, And In Meeting, Begin To Exist.

He Knew Now That It Was His Own Will To Happiness Which Must Make The Next Move. But If He Was To Do So, He Realized That He Must Come To Terms With Time, That To Have Time Was At Once The Most Magnificent And The Most Dangerous Of Experiments. Idleness Is Fatal Only To The Mediocre.

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

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.

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

Fiction Is The Lie Through Which We Tell The Truth.

Telling The Truth

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 Are All Exceptional Cases. We All Want To Appeal Against Something! Each Of Us Insists On Being Innocent At All Cost, Even If He Has To Accuse The Whole Human Race And Heaven Itself.

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

Fancy Language, Like Poplin, Too Often Conceals An Eczema.

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

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

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.

Believe Me, The Hardest Thing For A Man To Give Up Is That Which He Really Doesn't Want, After All.

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.

If, After All, Men Cannot Always Make History Have A Meaning, They Can Always Act So That Their Own Lives Have One.

A Person I Knew Used To Divide Human Beings Into Three Categories: Those Who Prefer To Have Nothing To Hide Rather Than Being Obliged To Lie, Those Who Prefer Lying To Having Nothing To Hide, And Finally Those Who Like Both Lying And The Hidden.

Happiness And The Absurd Are Two Sons Of The Same Earth. They Are Inseparable.

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.

Cruel Irony, The Poor Man Tormented With Hunger Feeds Those Who Plead His Case.

The Only Serious Question In Life Is Whether To Kill Yourself Or Not.

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

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

The Absurd Depends As Much On Man As On The World. For The Moment, It Is All That Links Them Together.

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.

Women Are All We Know Of Paradise On This Earth.

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

When The Body Is Sad, The Heart Languishes.

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

I Rebel; Therefore I Exist.

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.

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.

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

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

The Innocent Is The Person Who Explains Nothing

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.

The First Concern Of Any Dictatorship Is, Consequently, To Subjugate Both Labor And Culture.

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

We Don't Have The Time To Completely Be Ourselves. We Only Have The Room To Be Happy.

I Longed To Be Forgotten In Order To Be Able To Complain To Myself.

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

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.

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

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.

The Temptation Shared By All Forms Of Intelligence: Cynicism.

What On Earth Prompted You To Take A Hand In This?" "i Don't Know. My… My Code Of Morals, Perhaps." "your Code Of Morals. What Code, If I May Ask?" "comprehension.

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

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.

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.

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