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There Is A Metaphysical Honour In Ending The World's Absurdity. Conquest Or Play-acting, Multiple Loves, Absurd Revolt Are Tributes That Man Pays To His Dignity In A Campaign In Which He Is Defeated In Advance.... War Cannot Be Negated. One Must Live It Or Die Of It. So It Is With The Absurd: It Is A Question Of Breathing With It, Of Recognizing Its Lessons And Recovering Their Flesh. In This Regard The Absurd Joy Par Excellence Is Creation. "art And Nothing But Art", Said Nietzsche, "we Have Art In Order Not To Die Of The Truth."

-Albert Camus

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There Is A Metaphysical

Albert Camus

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There Is A Metaphysical Honour In Ending The World's Absurdity. Conquest Or Play-acting, Multiple Loves, Absurd Revolt Are Tributes That Man Pays To His Dignity In A Campaign In Which He Is Defeated In Advance.... War Cannot Be Negated. One Must Live It Or Die Of It. So It Is With The Absurd: It Is A Question Of Breathing With It, Of Recognizing Its Lessons And Recovering Their Flesh. In This Regard The Absurd Joy Par Excellence Is Creation. "art And Nothing But Art", Said Nietzsche, "we Have Art In Order Not To Die Of The Truth."

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

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

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

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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 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

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.

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

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.

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

Maman Used To Say That You Can Always Find Something To Be Happy About. In My Prison, When The Sky Turned Red And A New Day Slipped Into My Cell, I Found Out That She Was Right.

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How Many Crimes Are Permitted Simply Because Their Authors Could Not Endure Being Wrong.

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

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.

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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.

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

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.

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

There Is Always A Philosophy For Lack Of Courage.

The Only Real Progress Lies In Learning To Be Wrong All Alone.

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

There Is A Metaphysical Honour In Ending The World's Absurdity. Conquest Or Play-acting, Multiple Loves, Absurd Revolt Are Tributes That Man Pays To His Dignity In A Campaign In Which He Is Defeated In Advance.... War Cannot Be Negated. One Must Live It Or Die Of It. So It Is With The Absurd: It Is A Question Of Breathing With It, Of Recognizing Its Lessons And Recovering Their Flesh. In This Regard The Absurd Joy Par Excellence Is Creation. "art And Nothing But Art", Said Nietzsche, "we Have Art In Order Not To Die Of The Truth."

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

Moreover, Most People, Assuming They Had Not Altogether Abandoned Religious Observances, Or Did Not Combine Them Naively With A Thoroughly Immoral Way Of Living, Had Replace Normal Religious Practice By More Or Less Extravagant Superstitions.

We Turn Our Backs On Nature; We Are Ashamed Of Beauty. Our Wretched Tragedies Have A Smell Of The Office Clinging To Them, And The Blood That Trickles From Them Is The Color Of Printer's Ink.

But What Is Happiness Except The Simple Harmony Between A Man And The Life He Leads?

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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?

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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.

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Those Who Weep For The Happy Periods Which They Encounter In History Acknowledge What They Want; Not The Alleviation But The Silencing Of Misery.

The Absurd Is The Essential Concept And The First Truth.

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To Know Oneself, One Should Assert Oneself.

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

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

All Healthy Men Have Thought Of Their Own Suicide

Find Your Happiness In Yourself.

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

[love] Is The Type Of Disease That Spares Neither The Intelligent Nor The Idiotic.

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

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

Nothing In Life Is Worth, Turning Your Back On, If You Love It.

Turning Your Back

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

I Leave Sisyphus At The Foot Of The Mountain. One Always Finds One's Burden Again. But Sisyphus Teaches The Higher Fidelity That Negates The Gods And Raises Rocks. He Too Concludes That All Is Well. This Universe Henceforth Without A Master Seems To Him Neither Sterile Nor Futile. Each Atom Of That Stone, Each Mineral Flake Of That Night-filled Mountain, In Itself, Forms A World. The Struggle Itself Toward The Heights Is Enough To Fill A Man's Heart. One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy.

The Aim Of Art, The Aim Of A Life Can Only Be To Increase The Sum Of Freedom And Responsibility To Be Found In Every Man And In The World. It Cannot, Under Any Circumstances, Be To Reduce Or Suppress That Freedom, Even Temporarily.

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.

One Always Has Exaggerated Ideas About What One Doesn't Know.

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.

There Is Merely Bad Luck In Not Being Loved; There Is Misfortune In Not Loving. All Of Us, Today, Are Dying Of This Misfortune. For Violence And Hatred Dry Up The Heart Itself; The Long Fight For Justice Exhausts The Love That Nevertheless Gave Birth To It.

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.

One Cannot Be A Part-time Nihilist.

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.

We Are Not Certain, We Are Never Certain.

Real Fulfillment, For The Man Who Allows Absolutely Free Rein To His Desires, And Who Much Dominate Everything, Lies In Hatred.

Imagination Offers People Consolation For What They Cannot Be, And Humor For What They Actually Are.

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.

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.

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

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

When I Was Young I Asked More Of People Than They Could Give: Everlasting Friendship, Endless Feeling. Now I Know To Ask Less Of Them Than They Can Give: A Straightforward Companionship. And Their Feelings, Their Friendship, Their Generous Actions Seem In My Eyes To Be Wholly Miraculous: A Consequence Of Grace Alone.

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

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

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

If The World Were Clear, Art Would Not Exist.

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.

It Is Always Easy To Be Logical. It Is Almost Impossible To Be Logical To The Bitter End.

... 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.

True Artists Scorn Nothing.

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.

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.

Freedom Is Not A Reward Or A Decoration That You Toast In Champagne. On The Contrary, It's Hard Graft And A Long-distance Run, All Alone, Very Exhausting. Alone In A Dreary Room, Alone In The Dock Before The Judges, And Alone To Make Up Your Mind, Before Yourself And Before The Judgement Of Others. At The End Of Every Freedom There Is A Sentence, Which Is Why Freedom Is Too Heavy To Bear.

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

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

Experience Yourself

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

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

We're All Special Cases.

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.

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.

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.

Heroism Is Accessible. Happiness Is More Difficult.

To Understand One's World, One Must Sometimes Turn Away From It! To Serve Better, One Must Briefly Hold It At A Distance. Where Can The Necessary Solitude Be Found, The Long Breathing Space In Which Mind Gathers Its Strength And Takes Stock Of Its Courage.

Breathing Space

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.

There Is Scarcely Any Passion Without Struggle.

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.

By Definition, A Government Has No Conscience. Sometimes It Has A Policy, But Nothing More.

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

Live In The Present

If Only Nature Is Real And If, In Nature, Only Desire And Destruction Are Legitimate, Then, In That All Humanity Does Not Suffice To Assuage The Thirst For Blood, The Path Of Destruction Must Lead To Universal Annihilation.

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.

Suffering Gives Us No Special Rights.

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

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.

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

A Writer Cannot Put Himself Today In Service Of Those Who Make History; He Is At The Service Of Those Who Suffer It.

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.

When There Is No Hope, One Must Invent Hope.

I Was Comfortable In All, I Admit, But At The Same Time, Nothing Satisfied Me. Each Joy Made Me Seek Another.

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.

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

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.

To Lose The Touch Of Flowers And Women's Hands Is The Supreme Separation.

Whereas The Greeks Gave To Will The Boundaries Of Reason, We Have Come To Put The Will's Impulse In The Very Center Of Reason, Which Has, As A Result, Become Deadly.

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

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

Beginning To Think Is Beginning To Be Undermined.

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

Happiness And Love

If I Convince Myself That This Life Has No Other Aspect Than That Of The Absurd, If I Feel That Its Whole Equilibrium Depends On That Perpetual Opposition Between My Conscious Revolt And The Darkness In Which It Struggles, If I Admit That My Freedom Has No Meaning Except In Relation To Its Limited Fate, Then I Must Say That What Counts Is Not The Best Living But The Most Living.

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

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

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

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

The World Is Unimportant And Whoever Recognizes This Conquers His Liberty.

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

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

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.

The Workman Of Today Works Every Day In His Life At The Same Tasks, And This Fate Is No Less Absurd. But It Is Tragic Only At The Rare Moments When It Becomes Conscious.

We're Going Forward, But Nothing Changes.

When I See A New Face, Something Sets Off An Alarm Bell Inside Me. 'slow Down! Danger!' Even When The Attraction Is Strongest, I Am On My Guard.

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.

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To Grow Old Is To Pass From Passion To Compassion.

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

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

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

Happiness Too Is Inevitable.

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

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