Background Image

...

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

-Albert Camus

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

What More Ghastly Image

Albert Camus

...

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

Views: 8

Topic

More From Albert Camus

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.

When The Soul Suffers Too Much, It Develops A Taste For Misfortune.

Some Cry: 'love Me!!' Others: 'don't Love Me!!' But A Certain Genus, The Worst And Most Unhappy, Cries: 'don't Love Me And Be Faithful To Me!!'

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

The French Revolution Gave Birth To No Artists But Only To A Great Journalist, Desmoulins, And To An Under-the-counter Writer, Sade. The Only Poet Of The Times Was The Guillotine.

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."

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

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

...any Authentic Creation Is A Gift To The Future.

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.

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.

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

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

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 You Keep On Excusing, You Eventually Give Your Blessing To The Slave Camp, To Cowardly Force, To Organized Executioners, To The Cynicism Of Great Political Monsters; You Finally Hand Over Your Brothers.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Love Cannot Accept What It Is. Everywhere On Earth It Cries Out Against Kindness, Compassion, Intelligence, Everything That Leads To Compromise. Love Demands The Impossible, The Absolute, The Sky On Fire, Inexhaustible Springtime, Life After Death, And Death Itself Transfigured Into Eternal Life.

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.

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.

Beginning To Think Is Beginning To Be Undermined.

Do Not Be Surprised. I Do Not Like Writers And I Cannot Stand Their Lies. They Speak So As Not To Listen To Themselves Speak. If They Did Listen, They Would Know That They Are Nothing And Then They Would No Longer Be Able To Speak.

What Will Be Left Of The Power Of Example If It Is Proved That Capital Punishment Has Another Power, And A Very Real One, Which Degrades Men To The Point Of Shame, Madness, And Murder?

Every Ideology Is Contrary To Human Psychology.

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

In Order To Exist, Man Must Rebel.

Poverty, First Of All Was Never A Misfortune For Me; It Was Radiant With Sunlight.. I Owe It To My Family, First Of All, Who Lacked Everything And Who Envied Practically Nothing.

What Is Human In Me Is Not What Is Best In Me. What Is Human In Me Is That I Desire, And To Obtain What I Desire, I Believe I Would Crush Anything That Stood In My Way.

Great Feelings Take With Them Their Own Universe, Splendid Or Abject.

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

Great Ideas, It Has Been Said, Come Into The World As Gently As Doves. Perhaps Then, If We Listen Attentively, We Shall Hear Amid The Uproar Of Empires And Nations, A Faint Flutter Of Wings, The Gentle Stirring Of Life And Hope. Some Will Say That This Hope Lies In A Nation; Others In A Man. I Believe Rather That It Is Awakened, Revived, Nourished, By Millions Of Solitary Individuals Whose And Works Every Day Negate Frontiers And The Crudest Implications Of History.

My Profession Lent Itself Nicely To My Vocation For Heights. It Freed Me Of Any Bitterness Towards My Fellow Men, Who Were Alwaysin My Debt, Without My Owing Them Anything. It Placed Me Above The Judge Whom, I In Turn Judged, Above The Defendant Whom I Forced Into Gratitude.

There Is A Solitude In Poverty, But A Solitude Which Restores To Each Thing Its Value.

When The Imagination Sleeps, Words Are Emptied Of Their Meaning: A Deaf Population Absent-mindedly Registers The Condemnation Of A Man. ... There Is No Other Solution But To Speak Out And Show The Obscenity Hidden Under The Verbal Cloak.

The Struggle Itself Towards The Heights Is Enough To Fill A Man's Heart. One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy.

The Act Of Love Is A Confession.

I Would Rather Not Have Upset Him, But I Couldn't See Any Reason To Change My Life. Looking Back On It, I Wasn't Unhappy. When I Was A Student, I Had Lots Of Ambitions Like That. But When I Had To Give Up My Studies I Learned Very Quickly That None Of It Really Mattered.

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

Give Up The Tyranny Of Female Charm.

One Grows Out Of Pity When It's Useless.

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

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

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.

... There Are Two Types Of Happiness And I Have Chosen That Of The Murderers. For I Am Happy. There Was A Time When I Thought I Had Reached The Limit Of Distress. Beyond That Limit, There Is A Sterile And Magnificent Happiness.

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.

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.

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.

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

Those Who Lack The Courage Will Always Find A Philosophy To Justify It.

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.

Their Guilt Made Me Eloquent Because I Was Not Its Victim.

The Nobility Of Our Calling Will Always Be Rooted In Two Commitments Difficult To Observe: Refusal To Lie About What We Know, And Resistance To Oppression.

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

One Cannot Be A Part-time Nihilist.

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

You Know, [women] Do Not Really Condemn Any Weakness: Rather, They Try To Humiliate Or Disarm Our Strengths. That Is Why Women Arethe Reward, Not Of The Warrior, But Of The Criminal.

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.

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

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.

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

The More I Accuse Myself, The More Right I Have To Judge You. Even Better, I Make You Judge Yourself, Which Comforts Me The More.

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

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

The Slave And Those Whose Present Life Is Miserable And Who Can Find No Consolation In The Heavens Are Assured That At Least The Future Belongs To Them. The Future Is The Only Kind Of Property That The Masters Willingly Concede To The Slaves.

And Indeed It Could Be Said That Once The Faintest Stirring Of Hope Became Possible, The Dominion Of Plague Was Ended.

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.

If Christianity Is Pessimistic As To Man, It Is Optimistic As To Human Destiny. Well, I Can Say That, Pessimistic As To Human Destiny, I Am Optimistic As To Man.

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

I Have No Idea What's Awaiting Me, Or What Will Happen When This All Ends. For The Moment I Know This: There Are Sick People And They Need Curing.

Man Is An Idea, And A Precious Small Idea Once He Turns His Back On Love.

Precious Stones

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

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

Purely Historical Thought Is Therefore Nihilistic: It Wholeheartedly Accepts The Evil Of History And In This Way Is Opposed To Rebellion.

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

No, Father, I've A Very Different Idea Of Love. And Until My Dying Day I Shall Refuse To Love A Scheme Of Things In Which Children Are Put To Torture.

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.

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

Turning Your Back

Empires And Churches Are Born Under The Sun Of Death.

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

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

For Ever, I Shall Be A Stranger To Myself.

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

...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'.

The Society Of Merchants Can Be Defined As A Society In Which Things Disappear In Favor Of Signs. When A Ruling Class Measures Its Fortunes, Not By The Acre Of Land Or The Ingot Of Gold, But By The Number Of Figures Corresponding Ideally To A Certain Number Of Exchange Operations, It Thereby Condemns Itself To Setting A Certain Kind Of Humbug At The Center Of Its Experience And Its Universe. A Society Founded On Signs Is, In Its Essence, An Artificial Society In Which Man's Carnal Truth Is Handled As Something Artificial.

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.

In The World Today, Only A Philosophy Of Eternity Could Justify Non-violence.

The Ancients, Even Though They Believed In Destiny , Believed Primarily In Nature , In Which They Participated Wholeheartedly. To Rebel Against Nature Amounted To Rebelling Against Oneself. It Was Butting One's Head Against A Wall.

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

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

Mostly, I Could Tell, I Made Him Feel Uncomfortable. He Didn't Understand Me, And He Was Sort Of Holding It Against Me. I Felt The Urge To Reassure Him That I Was Like Everybody Else, Just Like Everybody Else. But Really There Wasn't Much Point, And I Gave Up The Idea Out Of Laziness.

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.

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.

Stupidity Has A Knack Of Getting Its Way.

Because There Is Nothing Here Than Invites Us To Cherish Unhappy Lovers. Nothing Is More Vain Than To Die For Love. What We Ought To Do Is Live.

Have You No Hope At All? And Do You Really Live With The Thought That When You Die, You Die, And Nothing Remains?" "yes," I Said.

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.

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.

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

I Am Too Much In Love With My Lies And Hypocrisies Not To Confess Them Fervently.

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.

To Live Is To Hurt Others, And Through Others, To Hurt Oneself. Cruel Earth! How Can We Manage Not To Touch Anything? To Find What Ultimate Exile?

The Spirit Of Rebellion Can Only Exist In A Society Where A Theoretical Equality Conceals Great Factual Inequalities. The Problem Of Rebellion, Therefore, Has No Meaning Except Within Our Own Western Society.

That's Love, Giving Everything, Sacrificing All Without Hope Of Return.

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

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.

Like Great Works, Deep Feelings Always Mean More Than They Are Conscious Of Saying.

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.

It Is The Job Of Thinking People Not To Be On The Side Of The Executioners.

The Innocent Is The Person Who Explains Nothing

Nihilism Is Not Only Despair And Negation, But Above All The Desire To Despair And To Negate.

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.

To Begin With, Poor People´s Memory Is Less Nourished Than That Of A Rich; It Has Fewer Landmarks In Space Because They Seldom Leave The Place Where They Live, And Fewer Reference Points In Time Throughtout Lives That Are Grey And Featureless.

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.

Independence Is Earned By A Few Words Of Cheap Confidence

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

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

The Important Thing Isn't The Soundness Or Otherwise Of The Argument, But For It To Make You Think.

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

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.

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.

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

Happiness Is Generous. It Does Not Subsist On Destruction.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Democracy Is Not The Law Of The Majority But The Protection Of The Minority.

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

Big Tears Of Frustration And Exhaustion Were Streaming Down His Cheeks. But Because Of All The Wrinkles, They Weren't Dripping Off. They Spread Out And Ran Together Again, Leaving A Watery Film Over His Ruined Face.

Men Are Convinced Of Your Arguments, Your Sincerity, And The Seriousness Of Your Efforts Only By Your Death.

A Stranger To Myself And To The World, Armed Solely With A Thought That Negates Itself As Soon As It Asserts, What Is This Condition In Which I Can Have Peace Only By Refusing To Know And To Live, In Which The Appetite For Conquest Bumps Into Walls That Defy Its Assaults?

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

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

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

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.

Once Crime Was As Solitary As A Cry Of Protest; Now It Is As Universal As Science. Yesterday It Was Put On Trial; Today It Determines The Law.

Am Well. Thinking Of You Always. Love

Thinking Of You

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

The Soul Of A Murderer Is Blind

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

Psychology Is Action, Not Thinking About Oneself.

To Cut Short This Question Of The Law Of Retaliation, We Must Note That Even In Its Primitive Form It Can Operate Only Between Two Individuals Of Whom One Is Absolutely Innocent And The Other Absolutely Guilty. The Victim, To Be Sure, Is Innocent. But Can The Society That Is Supposed To Represent The Victim Lay Claim To Innocence?

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

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

The End Of Their Passion Consists Of Loving Uselessly At The Moment When It Is Pointless.

Happiness And Love

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

For Instance, I Never Complained That My Birthday Was Overlooked; People Were Even Surprised, With A Touch Of Admiration, By My Discretion On This Subject. But The Reason For My Disinterestedness Was Even More Discreet: I Longed To Be Forgotten In Order To Be Able To Complain To Myself... Once My Solitude Was Thoroughly Proved, I Could Surrender To The Charms Of A Virile Self-pity.

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

The Entire History Of Mankind Is, In Any Case, Nothing But A Prolonged Fight To The Death For The Conquest Of Universal Prestige And Absolute Power.

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.

Don't Let Them Tell Us Stories.

I Was Absent At The Moment I Took Up The Most Space.

The Mistake That Men Make Is That They Do Not Believe In Theater. Otherwise, They Would Know That Every Man Is Allowed To Play Thecelestial Tragedies And To Become God. All He Has To Do Is Harden His Heart.

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

Life Is A Story And God Is Author.life Is Absurd.i Think So.

To Feel Absolutely Right Is The Beginning Of The End.

I Was Born Poor And Without Religion, Under A Happy Sky, Feeling Harmony, Not Hostility, In Nature. I Began Not By Feeling Torn, But In Plenitude.

…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.

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

The Only Way Out [of International Dictatorship] Is To Place International Law Above Governments, Which Means [...] That There Must Be A Parliament For Making It, And That Parliament Must Be Constituted By Means Of Worldwide Elections In Which All Nations Will Take Part.

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

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

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

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

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.

Every Artist Preserves Deep Within Him A Single Source From Which, Throughout His Lifetime, He Draws What He Is, And What He Says. When The Source Dries Up, The Work Withers And Crumbles.

How Do You Put Everyone In The Pool, So You Have The Right To Dry Yourself In The Sun?

It Is Not Rebellion Itself Which Is Noble But The Demands It Makes Upon Us.

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

Truth And Freedom, Having Few Lovers, Are Demanding Mistresses.

Thus, In A Middle Course Between These Heights And Depths, They Drifted Through Life Rather Than Lived, The Prey Of Aimless Days And Sterile Memories, Like Wandering Shadows That Could Have Acquired Substance Only By Consenting To Root Themselves In The Solid Earth Of Their Distress.

When You Have Once Seen The Glow Of Happiness On The Face Of A Beloved Person, You Know That A Man Can Have No Vocation But To Awaken That Light On The Faces Surrounding Him. In The Depth Of Winter, I Finally Learned That Within Me There Lay An Invincible Summer.

The Most Loathsome Materialism Is Not The Kind People Usually Think Of, But The Sort That Attempts To Let Dead Ideas Pass For Living Realities, Diverting Into Sterile Myths The Stubborn And Lucid Attention We Give To What We Have Within Us That Must Forever Die.

In Italian Museums Are Sometimes Found Little Painted Screens That The Priest Used To Hold In Front Of The Face Of Condemned Men To Hide The Scaffold From Them.

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

But All The Long Speeches, All The Interminable Days And Hours That People Had Spent Talking About My Soul, Had Left Me With The Impression Of A Colorless Swirling River That Was Making Me Dizzy.

So All A Man Could Win In The Conflict Between Plague And Life Was Knowledge And Memories.

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.

The Modern Mind Is In Complete Disarray. Knowledge Has Stretched Itself To The Point Where Neither The World Nor Our Intelligence Can Find Any Foot-hold. It Is A Fact That We Are Suffering From Nihilism.

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.

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.

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

I Opened Myself To The Gentle Indifference Of The World.

Nothing In The World Is Worth Turning One's Back On What One Loves.

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.

I Have Always Felt I Lived On The High Seas, Threatened, At The Heart Of A Royal Happiness.

Trending Author

William McKinley

Category