Albert Camus, طاعون Quotes
There is something divine in mindless beauty, and Mersault was particularly responsive to it.
My soul’s a burden to me, I’ve had enough of it. I’m eager to be in that country, where the sun kills every question. I don’t belong here.
It is not true that the heart wears out — but the body creates this illusion.
The world is always satisfied, it turns out, with countenance it can understand. Indolence and cowardice do the rest. Independence is earned by a few words of cheap confidence.
The misery and greatness of this world: it offers no truths, but only objects for love. Absurdity is king, but love saves us from it.
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
Yes, one can wager war in this world, ape love, torture one’s fellow man, or merely say evil of one’s neighbor while knitting. But, in certain cases, carrying on, merely continuing, is superhuman.
Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present.
Thinking of the future, establishing aims for oneself, having preferences—all this presupposes a belief in freedom, even if one occasionally ascertains that one doesn't feel it.
It is necessary to fall in love – the better to provide an alibi for all the despair we are going to feel anyway.
But this time is ours, and we cannot live hating ourselves
I cannot stand the company of men. They flatter or they judge. I can stand neither of the two.
How did I picture the life after the grave? I fairly bawled out at him: "A life in which I can remember this life on earth. That's all I want of it.
In every guilty man, there is an element of innocence. This is what makes any absolute condemnation revolting. We do not think enough about pain" Albert Camus
When a man has learned how to remain alone with his suffering, how to overcome his longing to flee, then he has little left to learn.
The literal meaning of life is whatever you're doing that prevents you from killing yourself.
The mind, when it reaches its limits, must make a judgment and choose its conclusions. This is where suicide and the reply stand.
Is one to die voluntarily or to hope in spite of everything?
...he was conscious of the disastrous fact that love and desire must be expressed in the same way...
Their pleasures are fierce and their sleep impenetrable. And they know that the body has a soul in which the soul has no part.
People can think only in images. If you want to be a philosopher, write novels.
But a man's beauty represents inner, functional truths: his face shows what he can do.
If I had to write a book on morality, it would have a hundred pages and ninety-nine would be blank. On the last page I should write: "I recognize only one duty, and that is to love.
From the moment that man submits God to moral judgment, he kills Him his own heart.
If pimps and thieves were invariably sentenced, all decent people would get to thinking they themselves were constantly innocent.
Beyond the curve of his days he glimpsed neither superhuman happiness nor eternity--happiness was human, eternity ordinary.
I didn’t like having to explain to them, so I just shut up, smoked a cigarette, and looked at the sea.
It is in the thick of a calamity that one gets hardened to the truth, in other words to silence.
They were silent, humiliated by this return of the defeated, furious at their own silence, but the more it was prolonged the less capable they were of breaking it.
The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.
I am strangely tired, not from having talked so much but at the mere thought of what I still have to say
I couldn't quite understand how an ordinary man's good qualities could become crushing accusations against a guilty man.
Why, because an author has more rights than ordinary people, as everybody knows. People will stand much more from him.
They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences.
In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occa
How many crimes have been committed for no other reason than that the perpetrator could not bear being in the wrong!
Mistaken ideas always end in bloodshed, but in every case it is someone else's blood. This is why our thinkers feel free to say just about anything.
Actual freedom has not increased in proportion to man's awareness of it.
