Background Image

...

Thus, I Always Began By Assuming The Worst; My Appeal Was Dismissed. That Meant, Of Course, I Was To Die. Sooner Than Others, Obviously. 'but,' I Reminded Myself, 'it's Common Knowledge That Life Isn't Worth Living, Anyhow.' And, On A Wide View, I Could See That It Makes Little Difference Whether One Dies At The Age Of Thirty Or Threescore And Ten-- Since, In Either Case, Other Men Will Continue Living, The World Will Go On As Before. Also, Whether I Died Now Or Forty Years Hence, This Business Of Dying Had To Be Got Through, Inevitably.

-Albert Camus

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Thus, I Always Began

Albert Camus

...

Thus, I Always Began By Assuming The Worst; My Appeal Was Dismissed. That Meant, Of Course, I Was To Die. Sooner Than Others, Obviously. 'but,' I Reminded Myself, 'it's Common Knowledge That Life Isn't Worth Living, Anyhow.' And, On A Wide View, I Could See That It Makes Little Difference Whether One Dies At The Age Of Thirty Or Threescore And Ten-- Since, In Either Case, Other Men Will Continue Living, The World Will Go On As Before. Also, Whether I Died Now Or Forty Years Hence, This Business Of Dying Had To Be Got Through, Inevitably.

Views: 7

Topic

More From Albert Camus

False Judges Are Held Up In The World's Admiration And I Alone Know The True Ones.

Violence Is Both Unavoidable And Unjustifiable.

Obstinacy Alone Is Not A Virtue.

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.

For If I Try To Seize This Self Of Which I Feel Sure, If I Try To Define And To Summarize It, It Is Nothing But Water Slipping Through My Fingers.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Every Stone Here Sweats With Suffering, I Know That. I Have Never Looked At Them Without A Feeling Of Anguish. But Deep In My Heart I Know That The Most Wretched Among You Have Seen A Divine Face Emerge From Their Darkness. That Is The Face You Are Asked To See.

…there's No Question Of Heroism In All This. It's A Matter Of Common Decency. That's An Idea Which May Make Some People Smile, But The Only Means Of Fighting A Plague Is - Common Decency.

We Have Art In Order Not To Die Of Life.

I Had Been Right I Was Still Right I Was Always Right. I Had Lived My Life One Way And I Could Just As Well Lived It Another. I Had Done This And I Hadn T Done That. I Hadn T Done This Thing And I Had Done Another. And So?

Independence Is Earned By A Few Words Of Cheap Confidence

...there Was Only One Thing That Interested Her And That Was Getting Into Bed With Men Whenever She'd The Chance. And I Warned Her Straight. 'you'll Be Sorry One Day, My Girl, And Wish You'd Got Me Back'.

What Is A Rebel? A Man Who Says No.

Suffering Gives Us No Special Rights.

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.

... Man Has An Idea Of A Better World Than This. But Better Does Not Mean Different, It Means Unified... Religion Or Crime, Every Human Endeavor In Fact, Finally Obeys This Unreasonabledesire And Claims To Give Life A Form It Does Not Have.

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

Don't Lies Eventually Lead To The Truth? And Don't All My Stories, True Or False, Tend Toward The Same Conclusion? Don't They All Have The Same Meaning? So What Does It Matter Whether They Are True Or False If, In Both Cases, They Are Significant Of What I Have Been And What I Am? Sometimes It Is Easier To See Clearly Into The Liar Than Into The Man Who Tells The Truth. Truth, Like Light, Blinds. Falsehood, On The Contrary, Is A Beautiful Twilight That Enhances Every Object.

Every Minute Of Life Carries With It Its Miraculous Value, And Its Face Of Eternal Youth.

But, You Know, I Feel More Fellowship With The Defeated Than With Saints. Heroism And Sanctity Don't Really Appeal To Me, I Imagine. What Interests Me Is Being A Man.

To Assert In Any Case That A Man Must Be Absolutely Cut Off From Society Because He Is Absolutely Evil Amounts To Saying That Society Is Absolutely Good, And No-one In His Right Mind Will Believe This Today.

Charm Is A Way Of Getting The Answer 'yes' Without Asking A Clear Question.

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.

After All, I Do Not Have So Many Ways Of Proving That I Am Free. We Is Always Free At The Expense Of Someone Else. It Is A Bother,but It Is Normal.

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

A Profound Thought Is In A Constant State Of Becoming; It Adopts The Experience Of A Life And Assumes Its Shape.

I Said That The World Is Absurd, But I Was Too Hasty. This World In Itself Is Not Reasonable, That Is All That Can Be Said. But What Is Absurd Is The Confrontation Of This Irrational And The Wild Longing For Clarity Whose Call Echoes In The Human Heart.

Absurdity Of Life

I Knew A Pure Heart Who Refused Tot Be Mistrustful.... He Had Written At His Doorstep: "from Wherever You Are, Enter And Be Welcome". Who Do You Think Responded To This Lovely Invitation? The Militia, Who Made Themselves At Home And Gutted Him.

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

Decisions You Make

Every Ideology Is Contrary To Human Psychology.

...the Habit Of Despair Is Worse Than Despair Itself.

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

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

The Only Conception Of Freedom I Can Have Is That Of The Prisoner Or The Individual In The Midst Of The State. The Only One I Know Is Freedom Of Thought And Action.

In Order To Understand The World, One Has To Turn Away From It On Occasion.

Without Memories, Without Hope, They Lived For The Moment Only. Indeed, The Here And Now Had Come To Mean Everything To Them. For There Is No Denying That The Plague Had Gradually Killed Off In All Of Us The Faculty Not Of Love Only But Even Of Friendship. Naturally Enough, Since Love Asks Something Of The Future, And Nothing Was Left Us But A Series Of Present Moments.

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

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

Knowledgeable Person

For The First Time, The First, I Laid My Heart Open To The Benign Indifference Of The Universe. To Feel It So Like Myself, Indeed So Brotherly, Made Me Realize That I'd Been Happy, And That I Was Happy Still.

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

He Seemed So Certain About Everything, Didn't He? And Yet None Of His Certainties Was Worth One Hair Of A Woman's Head. He Wasn't Even Sure He Was Alive, Because He Was Living Like A Dead Man.

There Are Some Individuals Who Have Too Strong A Craving, A Will, And A Nostalgia For Happiness Ever To Reach It. They Always Retain A Bitter And Passionate Aftertaste, And That's The Best They Can Hope For.

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

I Love Life - That’s My Real Weakness. I Love It So Much That I Am Incapable Of Imagining What Is Not Life.

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.

... One Cannot Be Happy In Exile Or In Oblivion. One Cannot Always Be A Stranger. I Want To Return To My Homeland, Make All My Loved Ones Happy. I See No Further Than This.

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

We [writers] Must Know That We Can Never Escape The Common Misery And That Our Only Justification, If Indeed There Is A Justification, Is To Speak Up, Insofar As We Can, For Those Who Cannot Do So.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

In The Next Few Years The Struggle Will Not Be Between Utopia And Reality, But Between Different Utopias, Each Trying To Impose Itself On Reality ... We Can No Longer Hope To Save Everything, But ... We Can At Least Try To Save Lives, So That Some Kind Of Future, If Perhaps Not The Ideal One, Will Remain Possible.

I Sometimes Need To Write Things Which I Cannot Completely Control But Which Therefore Prove That What Is In Me Is Stronger Than I Am.

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.

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

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.

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

Live In The Present

This Is The Century Of Fear.

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

Turning Your Back

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.

In Oran, As Elsewhere, For Want Of Time And Thought, People Have To Love One Another Without Knowing It.

A Craving For Freedom And Independence Is Generated Only In A Man Still Living On Hope.

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.

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

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.

There Is No Love Of Life Without Despair Of Life.

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

Men Die And They Are Not Happy.

Art Does Not Tolerate Reason.

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

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

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

A Loveless World Is A Dead World.

We Can't Do Without Dominating Others Or Being Served.... The Essential Thing, In Sum, Is Being Able To Get Angry Without The Other Person Being Able To Answer Back.

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.

If Man Is Reduced To Being Nothing But A Character In History, He Has No Other Choice But To Subside Into The Sound And Fury Of Acompletely Irrational History Or To Endow History With The Form Of Human Reason.

We Are Not Certain, We Are Never Certain. If We Were We Could Reach Some Conclusions, And We Could, At Last, Make Others Take Us Seriously.

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

Where There Is No Hope, We Must Invent It.

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

Experience Yourself

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

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

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

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.

The Urge To Revolt Is One Of The Essential Dimensions Of Human Nature.

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

Always Go Too Far, Because That's Where You'll Find The Truth

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

When Silence Or Tricks Of Language Contribute To Maintaining An Abuse That Must Be Reformed Or A Suffering That Can Be Relieved, Then There Is No Other Solution But To Speak Out And Show The Obscenity Hidden Under The Verbal Cloak.

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."

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

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

All That Remains Is A Fate Whose Outcome Alone Is Fatal. Outside Of That Single Fatality Of Death, Everything, Joy Or Happiness, Is Liberty. A World Remains Of Which Man Is The Sole Master. What Bound Him Was The Illusion Of Another World. The Outcome Of His Thought, Ceasing To Be Renunciatory, Flowers In Images. It Frolics---in Myths, To Be Sure, But Myths With No Other Depth Than That Of Human Suffering And, Like It, Inexhaustible. Not The Divine Fable That Amuses And Blinds, But The Terrestrial Face, Gesture, And Drama In Which Are Summed Up A Difficult Wisdom And An Ephemeral Passion.

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

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.

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

There Can Be No Question Of Holding Forth On Ethics. I Have Seen People Behave Badly With Great Morality And I Note Every Day That Integrity Has No Need Of Rules

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.

Powerful, Yes, That Is The Word That I Constantly Rolled On My Tongue, I Dreamed Of Absolute Power, The Kind That Forces Others Tokneel, That Forces The Enemy To Capitulate, Finally Converting Him, And The More The Enemy Is Blind, Cruel, Sure Of Himself, Buried In His Conviction, The More His Admission Proclaims The Royalty Of He Who Has Brought On His Defeat.

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

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

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.

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.

Liberty Is Dangerous.

Revolution, In Order To Be Creative, Cannot Do Without Either A Moral Or Metaphysical Rule To Balance The Insanity Of History.

A Sub-clerk In The Post-office Is The Equal Of A Conqueror If Consciousness Is Common To Them.

A Trial Cannot Be Conducted By Announcing The General Culpability Of A Civilization. Only The Actual Deeds Which, At Least, Stank In The Nostrils Of The Entire World Were Brought To Judgment.

The True Work Of Art Is Always On The Human Scale. It Is Essentially The One That Says, 'less.

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.

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

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.

Every Time I Hear A Political Speech Or I Read Those Of Our Leaders, I Am Horrified At Having, For Years, Heard Nothing Which Sounded Human. It Is Always The Same Words Telling The Same Lies.

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

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.

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

Life Should Be Lived To The Point Of Tears

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

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

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

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

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.

Always There Comes An Hour When One Is Weary Of One's Work And Devotion To Duty, And All One Craves For Is A Loved Face, The Warmth And Wonder Of A Loving Heart.

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.

Capital Punishment Is The Most Premeditated Of Murders, To Which No Criminal's Deed, However Calculated Can Be Compared. For There To Be An Equivalency, The Death Penalty Would Have To Punish A Criminal Who Had Warned His Victim Of The Date At Which He Would Inflict A Horrible Death On Him And Who, From That Moment Onward, Had Confined Him At His Mercy For Months. Such A Monster Is Not Encountered In Private Life.

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.

Does The End Justify The Means? That Is Possible. But What Will Justify The End? To That Question, Which Historical Thought Leaves Pending, Rebellion Replies: The Means.

It Would Be Unjust, And Moreover Utopian, For Shakespeare To Direct The Shoemakers' Union. But It Would Be Equally Disastrous Forthe Shoemakers' Union To Ignore Shakespeare.

There Is So Much Stubborn Hope In The Human Heart.

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

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.

In Fact, Other People Create For Lack Of Power. I, On The Other Hand, Do Not Need A Work: I Live.

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

I've Seen Of Enough Of People Who Die For An Idea. I Don't Believe In Heroism; I Know It's Easy And I've Learned It Can Be Murderous. What Interests Me Is Living And Dying For What One Loves.

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

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

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

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

No Matter What Cause One Defends, It Will Suffer Permanent Disgrace If One Resorts To Blind Attacks On Crowds Of Innocent People.

Death Means Nothing To Men Like Me. It's The Event That Proves Them Right.

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

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

Finally, And Most Of All, Words Failed Him.

Stupidity Has A Knack Of Getting Its Way.

If Nothing Had Any Meaning, You Would Be Right. But There Is Something That Still Has A Meaning.

Meaning Of Life

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.

An Intellectual Is Someone Whose Mind Watches Itself.

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

No Ends, Simply Means.

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

Youth Is Above All A Collection Of Possibilities.

In Our Wildest Aberrations We Dream Of An Equilibrium We Have Left Behind And Which We Naively Expect To Find At The End Of Our Errors. Childish Presumption Which Justifies The Fact That Child-nations, Inheriting Our Follies, Are Now Directing Our History.

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

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

At One Time Or Another All Normal People Have Wished Their Loved Ones Were Dead.

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

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.

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

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

Psychology Is Action, Not Thinking About Oneself.

I Rebel; Therefore I Exist.

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

The Absurd Is Essentially A Divorce. It Lies In Neither Of The Elements Compared; It Is Born Of Their Confrontation.

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.

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

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

There Are Places Where The Mind Dies So That A Truth Which Is Its Very Denial May Be Born.

There Is No Frontier Between Being And Appearing.

We Must Learn How To Lend Ourselves To Dreaming When Dreams Lend Themselves To Us.

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

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

For Years I've Wanted To Live According To Everyone Else's Morals. I've Forced Myself To Live Like Everyone Else, To Look Like Everyone Else. I Said What Was Necessary To Join Together, Even When I Felt Separate. And After All Of This, Catastrophe Came. Now I Wander Amid The Debris, I Am Lawless, Torn To Pieces, Alone And Accepting To Be So, Resigned To My Singularity And To My Infirmities. And I Must Rebuild A Truth-after Having Lived All My Life In A Sort Of Lie.

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

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.

I Conceived At Least One Great Love In My Life, Of Which I Was Always The Object.

Integrity Needs No Rules.

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

And Often He Who Has Chosen The Fate Of The Artist Because He Felt Himself To Be Different Soon Realizes That He Can Maintain Neither His Art Nor His Difference Unless He Admits That He Is Like The Others. The Artist Forges Himself To The Others, Midway Between The Beauty He Cannot Do Without And The Community He Cannot Tear Himself Away From.

When Love Ceases To Be Tragic It Is Something Else And The Individual Again Throws Himself In Search Of Tragedy.

Happiness And Love

For Me, Physical Love Has Always Been Bound To An Irresistible Feeling Of Innocence And Joy. Thus, I Cannot Love In Tears But In Exaltation.

Happiness And Love

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.

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.

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

Trending Author

Jonny Greenwood

Philip Seymour Hoffman

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

Category