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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.

-Albert Camus

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We Are All Exceptional

Albert Camus

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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.

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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.

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

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

I Felt As Though I Was Partly Unlearning What I Had Never Learned And Yet Knew So Well: I Mean, How To Live.

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

At Any Street Corner The Feeling Of Absurdity Can Strike Any Man In The Face.

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

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

And I Too, Felt Ready To Start Life All Over Again. It Was As If That Great Rush Of Anger Had Washed Me Clean, Emptied Me Of Hope, And, Gazing Up At The Dark Sky Spangled With Its Signs And Stars, For The First Time, The First, I Laid My Heart Open To The Benign Indifference Of The Universe.

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.

Camus Himself Described This Work As 'an Attempt To Understand The Time I Live In'.

A Liking For Truth At Any Cost Is A Passion That Spares Nothing And That Nothing Resists. It's A Vice, At Times A Comfort, Or A Selfishness.

Accepting The Absurdity Of Everything Around Us Is One Step, A Necessary Experience: It Should Not Become A Dead End. It Arouses A Revolt That Can Become Fruitful

Don't Believe Your Friends When They Ask You To Be Honest With Them. All They Really Want Is To Be Maintained In The Good Opinion They Have Of Themselves.

Metaphysical Rebellion Is A Claim, Motivated By The Concept Of A Complete Unity, Against The Suffering Of Life And Death And A Protest Against The Human Condition Both For Its Incompleteness, Thanks To Death, And Its Wastefulness, Thanks To Evil.

What Really Counted Was The Possibility Of Escape, A Leap To Freedom, Out Of The Implacable Ritual, A Wild Run For It That Would Give Whatever Chance For Hope There Was. Of Course, Hope Meant Being Cut Down On Some Street Corner, As You Ran Like Mad, By A Random Bullet. But When I Really Thought It Through, Nothing Was Going To Allow Me Such A Luxury. Everything Was Against It; I Would Just Be Caught Up In The Machinery Again.

To Stay Or To Go, It Amounted To The Same Thing.

Every Rebellion Implies Some Kind Of Unity.

I Am Not Made For Politics Because I Am Incapable Of Wanting Or Accepting The Death Of The Adversary.

I Like These People Swarming On The Sidewalks, Wedged Into A Little Space Of Houses And Canals, Hemmed In By Fogs, Cold Lands, And The Sea Streaming Like A Wet Wash. I Like Them, For They Are Double. They Are Here And Elsewhere.

The First Progressive Step For A Mind Overwhelmed By The Strangeness Of Things Is To Realize That This Feeling Of Strangeness Is Shared With All Men And That Human Reality, In Its Entirety, Suffers From The Distance Which Separates It From The Rest Of The Universe.

Finally, And Most Of All, Words Failed Him.

The Current Motto For All Of Us Can Only Be This: Without Giving Up Anything On The Plane Of Justice, Yield Nothing On The Plane Of Freedom.

He Had Been Bored, That's All, Bored Like Most People. Hence He Had Made Himself Out Of Whole Cloth A Life Full Of Complications And Drama. Something Must Happen - And That Explains Most Human Commitments. Something Must Happen, Even Loveless Slavery, Even War Or Death. Hurray Then For Funerals!

What Must Be Remembered In Any Case Is That Secret Complicity That Joins The Logical And The Everyday To The Tragic.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

A Living Man Can Be Enslaved And Reduced To The Historic Condition Of An Object. But If He Dies In Refusing To Be Enslaved, He Reaffirms The Existence Of Another Kind Of Human Nature Which Refuses To Be Classified As An Object.

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.

When The Throne Of God Is Overturned, The Rebel Realizes That It Is Now His Own Responsibility To Create The Justice, Order, And Unity That He Sought In Vain Within His Own Condition, And In This Way To Justify The Fall Of God. Then Begins The Desperate Effort To Create, At The Price Of Crime And Murder If Necessary, The Dominion Of Man.

The Poor Man Whom Everyone Speaks Of, The Poor Man Whom Everyone Pities, One Of The Repulsive Poor From Whom Charitable Souls Keep Their Distance, He Has Still Said Nothing. Or, Rather, He Has Spoken Through The Voice Of Victor Hugo, Zola, Richepin. At Least, They Said So. And These Shameful Impostures Fed Their Authors. Cruel Irony, The Poor Man Tormented With Hunger Feeds Those Who Plead His Case.

You Know, A Man Always Judges Himself By The Balance He Can Strike Between The Needs Of His Body And The Demands Of His Mind. You're Judging Yourself Now, Mersaut, And You Don't Like The Sentence.

Judging Yourself

Perhaps We Cannot Prevent This World From Being A World In Which Children Are Tortured. But We Can Reduce The Number Of Tortured Children.

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

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.

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.

What Doesn't Kill You Make You Stronger And Stronger

Makes You Stronger

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

Creating Is Living Doubly. The Groping, Anxious Quest Of A Proust, His Meticulous Collecting Of Flowers, Of Wallpapers, And Of Anxieties, Signifies Nothing Else.

Many Fledgling Moralists In Those Days Were Going About Our Town Proclaiming There Was Nothing To Be Done About It And We Should Bow To The Inevitable. And Tarrou, Rieux, And Their Friends Might Give One Answer Or Another, But Its Conclusion Was Always The Same, Their Certitude That A Fight Must Be Put Up, In This Way Or That, And There Must Be No Bowing Down... There Was Nothing Admirable About This Attitude; It Was Merely Logical.

No Ends, Simply Means.

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

Morality, When Formal, Devours.

The One Who Doesnt Play, Doesnt Win Anything, But He Actually Looses Somehting, {playing}

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.

What Did It Matter If He Existed For Two Or For Twenty Years? Happiness Was The Fact That He Had Existed.

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

Time Will Prolong Time, And Life Will Serve Life. In This Field That Is Both Limited And Bulging With Possibilities, Everything To Himself, Except His Lucidity, Seems Unforeseeable To Him. What Rule, Then, Could Emanate From That Unreasonable Order? The Only Truth That Might Seem Instructive To Him Is Not Formal: It Comes To Life And Unfolds In Men. The Absurd Mind Cannot So Much Expect Ethical Rules At The End Of Its Reasoning As, Rather, Illustrations And The Breath Of Human Lives.

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

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.

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

It Is Terrifying To See How Easily, In Certain People, All Dignity Collapses. Yet When You Think About It, This Is Quite Normal Since They Only Maintain This Dignity By Constantly Striving Against Their Own Nature.

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

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

...the Play Of The Toughest And Most Lucid Mind Are At The Same Time Both Lavished Andsquandered.

There Is No Shame In Preferring Happiness.

Art, At Least, Teaches Us That Man Cannot Be Explained By History Alone And That He Also Finds A Reason For His Existence In The Order Of Nature.

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.

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.

Still, Obviously, One Can't Be Sensible All The Time.

I Rebel; Therefore I Exist.

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.

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

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

Idleness Is Fatal Only To The Mediocre.

There Is Not A Single True Work Of Art That Has Not In The End Added To The Inner Freedom Insight And Life Of Each Person Who Has Known And Loved It.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

In 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.

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.

I Realized Then That A Man Who Had Lived Only One Day Could Easily Live For A Hundred Years In Prison. He Would Have Enough Memories To Keep Him From Being Bored

Every Act Of Rebellion Expresses A Nostalgia For Innocence And An Appeal To The Essence Of Being.

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.

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

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

Man Is The Only Creature That Refuses To Be What He Is.

One Might Think, That A Period Which, Within Fifty Years, Uproots, Enslaves Or Kills Seventy Million Human Beings, Should Only, And Forthwith, Be Condemned. But Also Its Guilt Must Be Understood.

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

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

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.

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

Europe Has Lived On Its Contradictions, Flourished On Its Differences, And, Constantly Transcending Itself Thereby, Has Created A Civilization On Which The Whole World Depends Even When Rejecting It. This Is Why I Do Not Believe In A Europe Unified Under The Weight Of An Ideology Or Of A Technocracy That Overlooked These Differences.

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

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

I Have A Very Old And Very Faithful Attachment For Dogs. I Like Them Because They Always Forgive.

... 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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

All Men Have A Sweetness In Their Life. That Is What Helps Them Go On. It Is Towards That They Turn When They Feel Too Worn Out.

It Is Not Humiliating To Be Unhappy. Physical Suffering Is Sometimes Humiliating, But The Suffering Of Being Cannot Be, It Is Life.

Happiness And Love

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

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.

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

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

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.

One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy.

You Cannot Create Experience. You Must Undergo It.

One Plays At Being Immortal And After A Few Weeks One Doesn't Even Know Whether Or Not One Can Hang On Till The Next Day.

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.

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

To Know Oneself, One Should Assert Oneself.

As Soon As One Does Not Kill Oneself, One Must Keep Silent About Life.

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.

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 Future Is The Only Kind Of Property That The Masters Willingly Concede To The Slaves.

The Look Of Success, When It Is Worn A Certain Way, Would Infuriate A Jackass.

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

Decisions You Make

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

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.

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

True Artists Scorn Nothing.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Peace Is The Only Battle Worth Waging.

When One Has No Character, One Has To Apply A Method. Here It Did Wonders Incontrovertibly, And I Am Living On The Site Of One Of The Greatest Crimes In Human History.

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

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

You Cannot Acquire Experience By Making Experiments. You Cannot Create Experience. You Must Undergo It.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

What Is A Firm Hand To Me, Of What Use To Me Is This Astonishing Power If I Cannot Change The Order Of Things, If I Cannot Make The Sun Set In The East, That Suffering Diminish And That Beings No Longer Die?

For The Existentials, Negation Is Their God. To Be Precise, That God Is Maintained Only Through The Negation Of Human Reason. But, Like Suicides, Gods Change With Men.

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.

Men Are Never Really Willing To Die Except For The Sake Of Freedom: Therefore They Do Not Believe In Dying Completely.

May Heaven Protect Us, Cher Monsieur, From Being Set On A Pedestal By Our Friends!!!

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

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.

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.

There Will Be No Lasting Peace Either In The Heart Of Individuals Or In Social Customs Until Death Is Outlawed.

I Explained To Him, However, That My Nature Was Such That My Physical Needs Often Got In The Way Of My Feelings.

Greatness Consists In Trying To Be Great. There Is No Other Way.

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

Everything Is True, And Nothing Is True!

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

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

There Always Comes A Time When One Must Choose Between Contemplation And Action. This Is Called Becoming A Man.

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.

To Abandon Oneself To Principles Is Really To Die - And To Die For An Impossible Love Which Is The Contrary Of Love.

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

What Is A Rebel? A Man Who Says No: But Whose Refusal Does Not Imply A Renunciation.

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.

An Intellectual Is Someone Whose Mind Watches Itself.

Liberty Is Dangerous.

I Have A Good, Hearty Laugh And An Energetic Handshake, And Those Are Trump Cards.

I Was Assailed By Memories Of A Life That Wasn't Mine Anymore, But One In Which I'd Found The Simplest And Most Lasting Joys.

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.

The Four Conditions Of Happiness: Life In The Open Air, Love For Another Being,freedom From Ambition,creation

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

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.

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

We Used To Wonder Where War Lived, What It Was That Made It So Vile. And Now We Realize That We Know Where It Lives... Inside Ourselves.

Liberty Is The Right Not To Lie.

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

The Rebel Can Never Find Peace. He Knows What Is Good And, Despite Himself, Does Evil. The Value Which Supports Him Is Never Given To Him Once And For All - He Must Fight To Uphold It, Unceasingly.

Art And Revolt Will Die Only With The Last Man.

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

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!

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

To Create Today Is To Create Dangerously. Any Publication Is An Act, And That Act Exposes One To The Passions Of An Age That Forgives Nothing.

Mother Died Today. Or Maybe Yesterday; I Can't Be Sure.

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

Having Money Is A Way Of Being Free Of Money.

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

The Act Of Love Is A Confession.

We Come Into The World Laden With The Weight Of An Infinite Necessity.

To Be Born To Create, To Love, To Win At Games Is To Be Born To Live In Time Of Peace. But War Teaches Us To Lose Everything And Become What We Were Not. It All Becomes A Question Of Style.

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

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

To Be Famous, In Fact, One Has Only To Kill One's Landlady.

If Something Is Going To Happen To Me, I Want To Be There.

I Can Negate Everything Of That Part Of Me That Lives On Vague Nostalgias, Except This Desire For Unity, This Longing To Solve, This Need For Clarity And Cohesion. I Can Refute Everything In This World Surrounding Me That Offends Or Enraptures Me, Except This Chaos, This Sovereign Chance And This Divine Equivalence Which Springs From Anarchy. I Don't Know Whether This World Has Meaning That Transcends It. But I Know That I Do Not Know That Meaning And That It Is Impossible For Me Just Now To Know It. What Can A Meaning Outside My Condition Mean To Me? I Can Understand Only In Human Terms.

Do You Believe In God, Doctor?" No - But What Does That Really Mean? I'm Fumbling In The Dark, Struggling To Make Something Out. But I've Long Ceased Finding That Original.

People Believe A Man Is In Distress Because His Loved One Dies In One Day. But His Real Pain Is Less Futile: It Is That He Finds Out That Sadness Too Does Not Last. Even Pain Has No Meaning.

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

In Art, Rebellion Is Consummated And Perpetuated In The Act Of Real Creation, Not In Criticism Or Commentary.

Suffering Gives Us No Special Rights.

As A Remedy To Life In Society I Would Suggest The Big City. Nowadays, It Is The Only Desert Within Our Means.

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

Seeking What Is True Is Not Seeking What Is Desirable.

Instead Of Killing And Dying In Order To Produce The Being That We Are Not, We Have To Live And Let Live In Order To Create What We Are.

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