Albert Camus, طاعون Quotes

The principle can be established that for a man who does not cheat what he believes to be true must determine his actions.

How had I not seen that there was nothing more important than an execution, and that when you come right down to it, it was the only thing a man could truly be interested in?

After all, I do not have so many ways of proving that I am free. We is always free at the expense of someone else. It is a bother,but it is normal.

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.

[Paris] is dirty. It has pigeons and black yards. The people have white skin.

In this vast country that he had so loved, he was alone.

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.

We are not certain, we are never certain.

At one time or another all normal people have wished their loved ones were dead.

In fact, other people create for lack of power. I, on the other hand, do not need a work: I live.

[Love] is the type of disease that spares neither the intelligent nor the idiotic.

A fate is not a punishment.

The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment, it is all that links them together.

And then came human beings; humans wanted to cling but there was nothing to cling to.

The soul of a murderer is blind

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.

Live to the point of tears.

Do not wait for the last judgment. It comes every day.

Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.

Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep

Au milieu de l'hiver, j'ai découvert en moi un invincible été.

The evil that is in the world almost always comes from ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.

Mother used to say that however miserable one is, there’s always something to be thankful for. And each morning, when the sky brightened and light began to flood my cell, I agreed with her.

If there were a party of those who aren't sure they're right, I'd belong to it.

There is no fate which cannot be surmounted by scorn.

There is but one true philosophical problem and that is suicide.

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.

Lying is not only saying what isn't true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true, and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels.

False judges are held up in the world’s admiration and I alone know the true ones.

What we call fundamental truths are simply the ones we discover after all the others.

It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.

You are forgiven for your happiness and your successes only if you generously consent to share them.

You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.

… I suppose that it is not so easy to go home and it takes a bit of time to make a son out of a stranger.

There is so much sttuborn hope in a human heart.

There is do much sttuborn hope in a human heart.

We refuse to despair of mankind. Without having the unreasonable ambition to save men, we still want to serve them.

Remembrance of things past is just for the rich. For the poor it only marks the faint traces on the path to death.

It seems that the people of Oran are like that friend of Flaubert who, on the point of death, casting a last glance at the irreplaceable earth, exclaimed: "Close the window, it's too beautiful.

որևէ քաղաք ճանաչելու ամենաճիշտ ձևերից մեկն էլ իմանալն է, թե ինչպե՞ս են այնտեղ աշխատում, ինչպե՞ս են սիրում, և ինչպե՞ս են մեռնում:

Every achievement is a servitude. It compels us to a higher achievement.

Don’t walk in front of me… I may not followDon’t walk behind me… I may not leadWalk beside me… just be my friend

It is a great deal to fight while despising war, to accept losing everything while still preferring happiness, to face destruction while cherishing the idea of a higher civilization.

In raining bullets on those silent faces, already turned away from this world, you think you are disfiguring the face of our truth.

For all those landscapes, those flowers and those plowed fields, the oldest of lands, show you every spring that there are things you cannot choke in blood.

And despite the clamors and the violence, we tried to preserve in our hearts the memory of a happy sea, of a remembered hill, the smile of a beloved face.

You must realize that men make war as much with the enthusiasm of those who want it as with the despair of those who reject it with all their soul.

Don't let them tell us stories

How unbearable, for women, is the tenderness which a man can give them without love. For men, how bittersweet this is.

Women naturally prefer their ideas to their sensations.