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What, In Fact, Is A Novel But A Universe In Which Action Is Endowed With Form, Where Final Words Are Pronounced, Where People Possess One Another Completely, And Where Life Assumes The Aspect Of Destiny?

-Albert Camus

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What, In Fact, Is

Albert Camus

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What, In Fact, Is A Novel But A Universe In Which Action Is Endowed With Form, Where Final Words Are Pronounced, Where People Possess One Another Completely, And Where Life Assumes The Aspect Of Destiny?

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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.

It's Not The Struggle That Makes Us Artists, But Art That Makes Us Struggle.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Thus I Draw From The Absurd Three Consequences, Which Are My Revolt, My Freedom, And My Passion. By The Mere Activity Of Consciousness I Transform Into A Rule Of Life What Was An Invitation To Death—and I Refuse Suicide.

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 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

What Doesn't Kill You Make You Stronger And Stronger

Makes You Stronger

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.

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

You Know Very Well That I No Longer Think. I Am Far Too Intelligent For That.

Every Great Work Makes The Human Face More Admirable And Richer, And This Is Its Whole Secret.

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

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

Of Course, True Love Is Exceptional - Two Or Three Times A Century, More Or Less. The Rest Of The Time There Is Vanity Or Boredom.

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

There Is But One Truly Serious Philosophical Problem And That Is Suicide. Judging Whether Life Is Or Is Not Worth Living Amounts To Answering The Fundamental Question Of Philosophy. All The Rest — Whether Or Not The World Has Three Dimensions, Whether The Mind Has Nine Or Twelve Categories — Comes Afterwards. These Are Games; One Must First Answer.

Happiness Is Generous. It Does Not Subsist On Destruction.

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

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

[many Artists], Even The Greatest Ones, Are Not Sure Of Their Own Existence. So They Search For Proof, They Judge, They Condemn. It Strengthens Them, It Is The Beginnings Of Existence. They Are Alone!

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.

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

The Society Based On Production Is Only Productive, Not Creative.

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.

It Is Necessary To Fall In Love... If Only To Provide An Alibi For All The Random Despair You Are Going To Feel Anyway.

Falling In Love

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

In The World There Is, Parallel To The Force Of Death And Constraint, An Enormous Force Of Persuasion That Is Called Culture.

Poor And Free Rather Than Rich And Enslaved. Of Course, Men Want To Be Both Rich And Free, And This Is What Leads Them At Times To Be Poor And Enslaved.

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.

Beauty, No Doubt, Does Not Make Revolutions. But A Day Will Come When Revolutions Will Have Need Of Beauty.

Utopia Is That Which Is In Contradiction With Reality.

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

Happiness And Love

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

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.

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

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

I Continue To Believe That This World Has No Ultimate Meaning. But I Know That Something In It Has A Meaning And That Is Man, Because He Is The Only Creature To Insist On Having One

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

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.

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

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

One Of The Only Coherent Philosophical Positions Is Thus Revolt. It Is A Constant Confrontation Between Man And His Own Obscurity.

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

Absurdity Of Life

There Is Scarcely Any Passion Without Struggle.

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

All Modern Revolutions Have Ended In A Reinforcement Of The Power Of The State.

Yes, I'm Happy, In Human Terms.

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.

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

Against Eternal Injustice, Man Must Assert Justice, And To Protest Against The Universe Of Grief, He Must Create Happiness.

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

I Feel More Fellowship With The Defeated Than With Saints.

Nothing Is More Despicable Than Respect Based On Fear.

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

There May Be Responsible Persons, But There Are No Guilty Ones.

Blessed Are The Hearts That Can Bend; They Shall Never Be Broken.

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

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

Finally, And Most Of All, Words Failed Him.

Rule: Start By Looking For What Is Valid In Every Man.

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

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

Live And Let Live

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

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.

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".

I Am Just Coming Out Of Five Years Of Night, And This Orgy Of Violent Lights Gives Me For The First Time The Impression Of A New Continent. An Enormous, 50-foot High Camel Billboard : A Gi With His Mouth Wide Open Blows Enormous Puffs Of Real Smoke. So Much Bad Taste Hardly Seems Imaginable.

... 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.

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

After All Manner Of Professors Have Done Their Best For Us, The Place We Are To Get Knowledge Is In Books. The True University Of These Days Is A Collection Of Books.

People Don't Love Each Other At Our Age, Marthe—they Please Each Other, That's All. Later On, When You're Old And Impotent, You Can Love Someone. At Our Age, You Just Think You Do. That's All It Is.

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 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.

Truth, Like Light, Blinds. Falsehood, On The Contrary, Is A Beautiful Twilight That Enhances Every Object.

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!

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

If One Could Only Say Just Once: 'this Is Clear', All Would Be Saved

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

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

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

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.

The More I Produce, The Less I Am Certain. On The Road Along Which The Artist Walks, Night Falls Ever More Densely. Finally, He Dies Blind.

The Opposite Of An Idealist Is Too Often A Man Without Love.

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.

All I Know Of Morality I Learned From Football

Great Feelings Take With Them Their Own Universe, Splendid Or Abject. They Light Up With Their Passion An Exclusive World In Which They Recognize Their Climate.

In Order To Understand The World, One Has To Turn Away From It On Occasion; In Order To Serve Others Better, One Has To Hold Them At A Distance For A Time. But Where Can One Find The Solitude Necessary To Vigor, The Deep Breath In Which The Mind Collects Itself And Courage Gauges Its Strength? There Remain Big Cities.

Why Should It Be Essential To Love Rarely In Order To Love Much?

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?

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

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.

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.

Here Lives A Free Man. Nobody Serves Him.

Every Authentic Work Of Art Is A Gift Offered To The Future.

It Is Easier To Kill What We Do Not Know.

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

Whoever Gives Nothing, Has Nothing. The Greatest Misfortune Is Not To Be Unloved, But Not To Love.

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

Retaliation Is Related To Nature And Instinct, Not To Law. Law, By Definition, Cannot Obey The Same Rules As Nature.

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?

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

Knowledgeable Person

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

If Those Whom We Begin To Love Could Know Us As We Were Before Meeting Them They Could Perceive What They Have Made Of Us.

Happiness And Love

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

Live In The Present

The Most Elementary Form Of Rebellion, Paradoxically , Expresses An Aspiration For Order .

History Only Exists, In The Final Analysis, For God.

Travel, Which Is Like A Greater And A Graver Science, Brings Us Back To Ourselves.

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.

In Our Society, Any Man Who Doesn't Cry At His Mother's Funeral Is Liable To Be Condemned To Death.

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

The Loss Of Love Is The Loss Of All Rights, Even Though One Had Them All.

Truth, Like Light Is Dazzling. By Contrast, Untruth Is A Beautiful Sunset That Enhances Everything.

Artistic Creation Is A Demand For Unity And A Rejection Of The World.

Artistic Creation

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

No Ends, Simply Means.

Morality, When Formal, Devours.

It Is Better To Burn Than To Disappear.

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

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.

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

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

We Rarely Confide In Those Who Are Better Than We Are.

For What Gives Value To Travel Is Fear. It Breaks Down A Kind Of Inner Structure We Have. Travel Robs Us Of Such Refuge. Far From Our Own People, Our Own Language, Stripped Of All Our Props, Deprived Of Our Masks (one Doesn't Know The Fare On The Streetcars, Or Anything Else), We Are Completely On The Surface Of Ourselves.

We Must Admit That Today Conformity Is On The Left. To Be Sure, The Right Is Not Brilliant. But The Left Is In Complete Decadence, A Prisoner Of Words, Caught In Its Own Vocabulary, Capable Merely Of Stereotyped Replies, Constantly At A Loss When Faced With Truth, From Which It Nevertheless Claimed To Derive Its Laws. The Left Is Schizophrenic And Needs Doctoring Through Pitiless Self-criticism, Exercise Of The Heart, Close Reasoning, And A Little Modesty.

Every Man Needs Slaves Like He Needs Clean Air. To Rule Is To Breathe, Is It Not? And Even The Most Disenfranchised Get To Breathe. The Lowest On The Social Scale Have Their Spouses Or Their Children.

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

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

In Every Rebellion Is To Be Found The Metaphysical Demand For Unity, The Impossibility Of Capturing It, And The Construction Of A Substitute Universe.

Intelligence In Chains Loses In Lucidity What It Gains In Intensity.

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.'

Find Your Happiness In Yourself.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Meaning Of Life

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

Chacun Exige D'e" Tre Innocent, A' Tout Prix, Me" Me Si, Pour Cela, Il Faut Accuser Le Genre Humain Et Le Ciel. Everyone Insists On His Or Her Innocence, At All Costs, Even If It Means Accusing The Rest Of The Human Race And Heaven.

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

You Have So Much Inside You, And The Noblest Happiness Of All. Don’t Just Wait For A Man To Come Along. That’s The Mistake So Many Women Make. Find Your Happiness In Yourself.

Ironic Philosophies Produce Passionate Works.

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.

These Are Facts The Heart Can Feel; Yet They Call For Careful Study Before They Become Clear To The Intellect.

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.

What's Natural Is The Microbe. All The Rest-heath, Integrity, Purity (if You Like)-is A Product Of The Human Will, Of A Vigilance That Must Never Falter. The Good Man, The Man Who Infects Hardly Anyone, Is The Man Who Has The Fewest Lapses Of Attention.

The Realization That Life Is Absurd And Cannot Be An End, But Only A Beginning. This Is A Truth Nearly All Great Minds Have Taken As Their Starting Point. It Is Not This Discovery That Is Interesting, But Theconsequences And Rules Of Action Drawn From It.

No Cause Justifies The Deaths Of Innocent People.

More And More, When Faced With The World Of Men, The Only Reaction Is One Of Individualism. Man Alone Is An End Unto Himself. Everything One Tries To Do For The Common Good Ends In Failure.

A Guilty Conscience Needs To Confess. A Work Of Art Is A Confession.

Youth Is Above All A Collection Of Possibilities.

I Have No Friends, I Only Have Accomplices Now. On The Other Hand, My Accomplices Are More Numerous Than My Friends: They Are The Human Race.

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

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.

Old Married People Look So Much Alike That They Have The Same Number Of Hairs In Their Ears.

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

Psychology Is Action, Not Thinking About Oneself.

Absolute Virtue Is Impossible And The Republic Of Forgiveness Leads, With Implacable Logic, To The Republic Of The Guillotine.

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.

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

This World, Such As It Is, Is Not Tolerable. Therefore I Need The Moon, Or Happiness, Or Immortality, I Need Something Which Is Perhaps Demented, But Which Is Not Of This World.

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 Taste For Truth At Any Cost Is A Passion Which Spares Nothing.

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

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

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

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

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.

For Who Would Dare To Assert That Eternal Happiness Can Compensate For A Single Moment's Human Suffering

Eternal Happiness

There Is Always A Certain Hour Of The Day And Of The Night When A Man’s Courage Is At Its Lowest Ebb, And It Was That Hour Only That He Feared.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

Women Are All We Know Of Paradise On This Earth.

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

For The First Time In A Long Time I Thought About Maman. I Felt As If I Understood Why At The End Of Her Life She Had Taken A 'fiancé,' Why She Had Played At Beginning Again. Even There, In That Home Where Lives Were Fading Out, Evening Was A Kind Of Wistful Respite. So Close To Death, Maman Must Have Felt Free Then And Ready To Live It All Again. Nobody, Nobody Had The Right To Cry Over Her. And I Felt Ready To Live It All Again Too.

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

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

Those Who Prefer Their Principles Over Their Happiness, They Refuse To Be Happy Outside The Conditions They Seem To Have Attached To Their Happiness.

Happiness And Love

What Gives Value To Travel Is Fear. It Is A Fact That, At A Certain Moment, When We Are So Far From Our Own Country, We Are Seized By A Vague Fear And An Instinctive Desire To Go Back To The Protection Of Old Habits. I Look Upon It More As An Occasion For Testing.

I'd Have Given Ten Conversations With Einstein For A First Meeting With A Pretty Chorus Girl.

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

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

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.

Existence Is Illusory And It Is Eternal.

Thus I Progressed On The Surface Of Life, In The Realm Of Words As It Were, Never In Reality. All Those Books Barely Read, Those Friends Barely Loved, Those Cities Barely Visited, Those Women Barely Possessed! I Went Through The Gestures Out Of Boredom Or Absent-mindedness. Then Came Human Beings; They Wanted To Cling, But There Was Nothing To Cling To, And That Was Unfortunate--for Them. As For Me, I Forgot. I Never Remembered Anything But Myself.

Although It Was The Middle Of Winter, I Finally Realized That, Within Me, Summer Was Inextinguishable.

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.

One Cannot Be A Part-time Nihilist.

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.

There Can Be No Question Of Masking The Evidence, Of Suppressing The Absurd By Denying One Of The Terms Of Its Equation. It Is Essential To Know Whether One Can Live With It Or Whether, On The Other Hand, Logic Commands One To Die Of It.

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