Albert Camus quotes - page 10

Whatever we may do, excess will always keep its place in the heart of man, in the place where solitude is found. We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others. (Albert Camus)
Knowing whether or not one can live without appeal is all that interests me. View quote
Albert Camus
Opinions differ as to the reasons why he became the futile laborer of the underworld. To begin with, he is accused of a certain levity in regard to the gods. He stole their secrets. View quote
Albert Camus
The essential is to cease being free and to obey, in repentance, a greater rogue than oneself. When we are all guilty, that will be democracy. View quote
Albert Camus
The greatest saving one can make in the order of thought is to accept the unintelligibility of the world - and to pay attention to man. View quote
Albert Camus
He realized now that to be afraid of this death he was staring at with animal terror meant to be afraid of life. Fear of dying justified a limitless attachment to what is alive in man. And all those who had not made the gestures necessary to live their lives, all those who feared and exalted impotence - they were afraid of death because of the sanction it gave to a life in which they had not been involved. They had not lived enough, never having lived at all. View quote
Albert Camus
Nothing is harder to understand than a symbolic work. A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing. View quote
Albert Camus
The papers were always talking about the debt owed to society. According to them, it had to be paid. But that doesn't speak to the imagination. 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. View quote
Albert Camus
This is the truth," we say. "You can discuss it as much as you want; we aren't interested. But in a few years there'll be the police who will show you we are right. View quote
Albert Camus
The artist reconstructs the world to his plan. View quote
Albert Camus
"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. (Albert Camus)
The absurd does not liberate; it binds. It does not authorize all actions. "Everything is permitted" does not mean that nothing is forbidden. View quote
Albert Camus
The world evades us because it becomes itself again. That stage scenery masked by habit becomes what it is. It withdraws at a distance from us. View quote
Albert Camus
So many men are deprived of grace. How can one live without grace? One has to try it and do what Christianity never did: be concerned with the damned. View quote
Albert Camus
"The real saint”, Baudelaire pretends to think, "is he who flogs and kills people for their own good.” His argument will be heard. A race of real saints is beginning to spread over the earth for the purposes of confirming these curious conclusions about rebellion. View quote
Albert Camus
In order to cease being a doubtful case, one has to cease being, that's all. View quote
Albert Camus
He tried to recall what he had read about the disease. Figures floated across his memory, and he recalled that some thirty or so great plagues known to history had accounted for nearly a hundred million deaths. 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 actually sees him dead, a hundred million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination. View quote
Albert Camus
A punishment that penalizes without forestalling is indeed called revenge. View quote
Albert Camus
To become god is merely to be free on this earth, not to serve an immortal being. View quote
Albert Camus
"My field," said Goethe, "is time." That is indeed the absurd speech. What, in fact, is the Absurd Man? He who, without negating it, does nothing for the eternal. Not that nostalgia is foreign to him. But he prefers his courage and his reasoning. The first teaches him to live without appeal and to get along with what he has; the second informs him of his limits. Assured of his temporally limited freedom, of his revolt devoid of future, and of his mortal consciousness, he lives out his adventure within the span of his lifetime. View quote
Albert Camus
Art is the activity that exalts and denies simultaneously. "No artist tolerates reality," says Nietzsche. (Albert Camus)
The preceding merely defines a way of thinking. But the point is to live. View quote
Albert Camus
This was her finest role and the hardest one to play. Choosing between heaven and a ridiculous fidelity, preferring oneself to eternity or losing oneself in God is the age-old tragedy in which each must play his part. View quote
Albert Camus
Great novelists are philosopher-novelists who write in images instead of arguments. View quote
Albert Camus
Absolute freedom mocks at justice. Absolute justice denies freedom. To be fruitful, the two ideas must find their limits in each other. View quote
Albert Camus