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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.

-Albert Camus

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You Make The Mistake

Albert Camus

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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.

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

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.

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

Healthy People Have A Natural Skill Of Avoiding Feverish Eyes.

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.

What The World Requires Of The Christians Is That They Should Continue To Be Christians.

No Longer Were There Individual Destinies; Only A Collective Destiny, Made Of Plague And Emotions Shared By All.

It Is Not True That The Heart Wears Out - But The Body Creates This Illusion.

Man Stands Face To Face With The Irrational. He Feels Within Him His Longing For Happiness And For Reason. The Absurd Is Born Of This Confrontation Between The Human Need And The Unreasonable Silence Of The World.

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.

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?

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

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

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

The Principles Which Men Give To Themselves End By Overwhelming Their Noblest Intentions.

I Felt The Urge To Reassure Him That I Was Like Everybody Else, Just Like Everybody Else.

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

Rebellion Cannot Exist Without A Strange Form Of Love.

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

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.

What Is Called A Reason For Living Is Also An Excellent Reason For Dying.

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

...we Rarely Confide In Those Who Are Better Than We. Rather, We Are More Inclined To Flee Their Society. Most Often, On The Other Hand, We Confess To Those Who Are Like Us And Who Share Our Weaknesses. Hence We Don't Want To Improve Ourselves And Be Bettered, For We Should First Have To Be Judged In Default. We Merely Wish To Be Pitied And Encouraged In The Course We Have Chosen. In Short, We Should Like, At The Same Time, To Cease Being Guilty And Yet Not To Make The Effort Of Cleansing Ourselves.

In Truth, I Was So Good At Being A Man, With Such Plenitude And Simplicity, That I Thought I Was Something Of A Superman.

For Rich People, The Sky Is Just An Extra, A Gift Of Nature. The Poor, On The Other Hand, Can See It As It Is, A Gift Of Infinite Grace.

The Truth Is That Nothing Is Less Sensational Than Pestilence, And By Reason Of Their Very Duration Great Misfortunes Are Monotonous.

The Harshest Winter Finds An Invincible Summer In Us.

Invincible Summer

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

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

We Must Stitch Up What Has Been Torn Apart, Render Justice Imaginable In The World Which Is So Obviously Unjust, Make Happiness Meaningful For Nations Poisoned By The Misery Of This Century. Naturally, It Is A Superhuman Task. But Tasks Are Called Superhuman When Men Take A Long Time To Complete Them, That Is All.

Forever I Shall Be A Stranger To Myself. In Psychology As In Logic, There Are Truths But No Truth.

If, After All, Men Cannot Always Make History Have A Meaning, They Can Always Act So That Their Own Lives Have One.

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.

Absolute Freedom Mocks At Justice. Absolute Justice Denies Freedom.

For If There Is A Sin Against Life, It Consists Perhaps Not So Much In Despairing Of Life As In Hoping For Another Life And In Eluding The Implacable Grandeur Of This Life.

Gilbert Jonas, Painter, Believed In His Star.... His Own Faith Was Not, However, Without Its Virtues Because It Consisted In Admitting, In Some Obscure Way, That He Would Obtain Many Things Without Deserving Them.

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

Man Wants To Live, But It Is Useless To Hope That This Desire Will Dictate All His Actions.

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

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.

We Have Art In Order Not To Die Of Life.

When One Has Extensively Pondered About Men, As A Career Or As A Vocation, One Sometimes Feels Nostalgic For Primates. At Least They Do Not Have Ulterior Motives.

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

Knowledgeable Person

Real Generosity Toward The Future Lies In Giving All To The Present.

The First Choice An Artist Makes Is Precisely To Be An Artist, And If He Chooses To Be An Artist It Is In Consideration Of What He Is Himself And Because Of A Certain Idea He Has Of Art

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.

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

The Purpose Of A Writer Is To Keep Civilization From Destroying Itself.

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

Virtue Cannot Separate Itself From Reality Without Becoming A Principle Of Evil.

Finally, And Most Of All, Words Failed Him.

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

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

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

Live And Let Live

I Rebel; Therefore I Exist.

In Default Of Inexhaustible Happiness, Eternal Suffering Would At Least Give Us A Destiny. But We Do Not Even Have That Consolation, And Our Worst Agonies Come To An End One Day.

In The Midst Of Winter, I Found There Was, Within Me, An Invincible Summer. And That Makes Me Happy. For It Says That No Matter How Hard The World Pushes Against Me, Within Me, There’s Something Stronger – Something Better, Pushing Right Back.

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

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

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.

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

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

Empires And Churches Are Born Under The Sun Of Death.

Do Not Be Afraid Of Spending Quality Time By Yourself. Find Meaning Or Don’t Find Meaning But “steal” Some Time And Give It Freely And Exclusively To Your Own Self. Opt For Privacy And Solitude. That Doesn’t Make You Antisocial Or Cause You To Reject The Rest Of The World. But You Need To Breathe. And You Need To Be.

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

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

Thoughts Of Suicide Have Got Me Through Many A Bad Night.

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

…. Query: How Contrive Not To Waste One's Time? Answer: By Being Fully Aware Of It All The While. Ways In Which This Can Be Done: By Spending One's Days On An Uneasy Chair In A Dentist's Waiting-room; By Remaining On One's Balcony All Of A Sunday Afternoon; By Listening To Lectures In A Language On Doesn't Know; By Traveling By The Longest And Least-convenient Train Routes, And Of Course Standing All The Way; By Lining Up At The Box-office Of Theaters And Then Not Buying A Seat; And So Forth.

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.

Art Does Not Tolerate Reason.

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.

In That Daily Effort In Which Intelligence And Passion Mingle And Delight Each Other, The Absurd Man Discovers A Discipline That Will Make Up The Greatest Of His Strengths. The Required Diligence And Doggedness And Lucidity Thus Resemble The Conqueror's Attitude. To Create Is Likewise To Give A Shape To One's Fate. For All These Characters, Their Work Defines Them At Least As Much As It Is Defined By Them. The Actor Taught Us This: There Is No Frontier Between Being And Appearing.

If It Adapts Itself To What The Majority Of Our Society Wants, Art Will Be A Meaningless Recreation.

I Do Not Believe In God And I Am Not An Atheist.

It's Better To Bet On This Life Than On The Next.

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.

At 30 A Man Should Know Himself Like The Palm Of His Hand, Know The Exact Number Of His Defects And Qualities, Know How Far He Can Go, Foretell His Failures - Be What He Is. And, Above All, Accept These Things.

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

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 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?

Believe Me, Religions Are On The Wrong Track The Moment They Moralize And Fulminate Commandments. God Is Not Needed To Create Guilt Or To Punish. Our Fellow Men Suffice, Aided By Ourselves.

At The Heart Of All Beauty Lies Something Inhuman, And These Hills, The Softness Of The Sky, The Outline Of These Trees At This Very Minute Lose The Illusory Meaning With Which We Had Clothed Them, Henceforth More Remote Than A Lost Paradise . . . That Denseness And That Strangeness Of The World Is Absurd.

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 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.

Life Is The Sum Of Your Choices.

Madness Such As This, Its Like Trying To Stop A Fire With The Moisture From A Kiss

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

There Is But One Freedom, To Put Oneself Right With Death. After That Everything Is Possible.

And Real Nobility (that Of The Heart) Is Based On Scorn, Courage, And Profound Indifference.

Don't Wait For The Last Judgment - It Takes Place Every Day.

After Another Moment's Silence She Mumbled That I Was Peculiar, That That Was Probably Why She Loved Me But That One Day I Might Disgust Her For The Very Same Reason.

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

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

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

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.

Maman Used To Say That You Can Always Find Something To Be Happy About.

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

But,' I Reminded Myself, 'it's Common Knowledge That Life Isn't Worth Living, Anyhow.

Common Knowledge

Whoever Today Speaks Of Human Existence In Terms Of Power, Efficiency, And Historical Tasks Is An Actual Or Potential Assassin.

He Who Despairs Of The Human Condition Is A Coward, But He Who Has Hope For It Is A Fool.

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

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

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 Sea, Rains, Necessity, Desire, The Struggle Against Death... These Are Things That Unite Us All.

Believe Me, The Hardest Thing For A Man To Give Up Is That Which He Really Doesn't Want, After All.

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

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.

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

As For Hitler, His Professed Religion Unhesitatingly Juxtaposed The God-providence And Valhalla. Actually His God Was An Argument At A Political Meeting And A Manner Of Reaching An Impressive Climax At The End Of Speeches.

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

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.

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

Existence Is Illusory And It Is Eternal.

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

Today We Are Always As Ready To Judge As We Are To Fornicate.

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

The Welfare Of The People In Particular Has Always Been The Alibi Of Tyrants.

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

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

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

She Was Waiting, But She Didn't Know For What. She Was Aware Only Of Her Solitude, And Of The Penetrating Cold, And Of A Greater Weight In The Region Of Her Heart.

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

Being Is Good, But Getting Rich Is Better.... If The Gods Had Only The Riches Of Men's Adoration, They Would Be As Poor As Poor Caligula.

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.

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

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

After All Perhaps The Greatness Of Art Lies In The Perpetual Tension Between Beauty And Pain, The Love Of Men And The Madness Of Creation, Unbearable Solitude And The Exhausting Crowd, Rejection And Consent.

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.

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.

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

Get Scared. It Will Do You Good. Smoke A Bit, Stare Blankly At Some Ceilings, Beat Your Head Against Some Walls, Refuse To See Some People, Paint And Write. Get Scared Some More. Allow Your Little Mind To Do Nothing But Function. Stay Inside, Go Out - I Don't Care What You'll Do; But Stay Scared As Hell. You Will Never Be Able To Experience Everything. So, Please, Do Poetical Justice To Your Soul And Simply Experience Yourself.

Experience Yourself

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

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?

I Do Not Want To Believe That Death Is The Gateway To Another Life. For Me, It Is A Closed Door. I Do Not Say It Is A Step We Must All Take, But That It Is A Horrible And Dirty Adventure.

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

Do Not Wait For The Last Judgment. It Takes Place Every Day.

Peace Is The Only Battle Worth Waging.

Men Must Live And Create. Live To The Point Of Tears.

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.

But It's Not Easy. I've Been Thinking It Over For Years. While We Loved Each Other We Didn't Need Words To Make Ourselves Understood. But People Don't Love Forever. A Time Came When I Should Have Found The Words To Keep Her With Me, Only I Couldn't.

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.

But Do You Know Why We Are Always More Just And Generous Toward The Dead? The Reason Is Simple. With Them There Is No Obligation. They Leave Us Free And We Can Take Our Time, Fit The Testimonial Between A Cocktail Party And A Nice Little Mistress, In Our Spare Time, In Short.

There Are More Things To Admire In Men Than To Despise.

The Laws Of Nature May Be Operative Up To A Certain Limit, Beyond Which They Turn Against Themselves To Give Birth To The Absurd.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Suffering Gives Us No Special Rights.

But Above All, In Order To Be, Never Try To Seem.

To Grow Old Is To Pass From Passion To Compassion.

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

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

Am Well. Thinking Of You Always. Love

Thinking Of You

We Are Not Certain, We Are Never Certain.

I Want To Know If I Can Live With What I Know, And Only Than.

All Systems Of Morality Are Based On The Idea That An Action Has Consequences That Legitimize Or Cancel It. A Mind Imbued With The Absurd Merely Judges That Those Consequences Must Be Considered Calmly.

Actions Have Consequences

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.

All Healthy Men Have Thought Of Their Own Suicide

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.

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

Rebellion, In Man, Is The Refusal To Be Treated As An Object And To Be Reduced To Simple Historical Terms. It Is The Affirmation Of A Nature Common To All Men, Which Eludes The World Of Power.

Humans Are Creatures, Who Spent Their Lifes Trying To Convince Themselves, That Their Existence Is Not Absurd

And It Was Like Knocking Four Quick Times On The Door Of Unhappiness.

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.

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

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

There Is A Terrible Emptiness In Me, An Indifference That Hurts.

Utopia Is That Which Is In Contradiction With Reality.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Happiness And Love

People Hasten To Judge In Order Not To Be Judged Themselves.

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

A True Masterpiece Does Not Tell Everything.

Il Y A Dans Les Hommes Plus De Choses A' Admirer Que De Choses A' Me Priser. There Are More Things To Admire In People Than To Despise.

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

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

A Lot Of Jobs Don't Allow You To Be Who You Are. There Is Dignity In Work Only When It Is Work Freely Accepted.

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.

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

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.

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.

My Chief Occupation, Despite Appearances, Has Always Been Love.

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.

In Order To Exist, Man Must Rebel.

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

You Will Never Be Happy If You Continue To Search For What Happiness Consists Of. You Will Never Live If You Are Looking For The Meaning Of Life.

One Cannot Be A Part-time Nihilist.

Women Are All We Know Of Paradise On This Earth.

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.

If The Only Significant History Of Human Thought Were To Be Written, It Would Have To Be The History Of Its Successive Regrets And Its Impotences.

Myth Of Sisyphus

There Is No Love Of Life Without Despair Of Life.

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

Happiness And The Absurd Are Two Sons Of The Same Earth. They Are Inseparable. It Would Be A Mistake To Say That Happiness Necessarily Springs From The Absurd Discovery. It Happens As Well That The Felling Of The Absurd Springs From Happiness. "i Conclude That All Is Well," Says Oedipus, And That Remark Is Sacred. It Echoes In The Wild And Limited Universe Of Man. It Teaches That All Is Not, Has Not Been, Exhausted. It Drives Out Of This World A God Who Had Come Into It With Dissatisfaction And A Preference For Futile Suffering. It Makes Of Fate A Human Matter, Which Must Be Settled Among Men.

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

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

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Leonora Carrington

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Cyrano De Bergerac

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