“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”
— Albert Camus
“Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.”
“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.”
“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
“Always go too far, because that's where you'll find the truth.”
“The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.”
“I rebel; therefore I exist.”
“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”
“Life is the sum of your choices.”
“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”
“The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
“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.”
“Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.”
“There is scarcely any passion without struggle.”
“Life should be lived to the point of tears.”
“Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself.”
“Peace is the only battle worth waging.”
“A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.”
“People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves.”
“When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune.”
“Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.”
“Sometimes, carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement.”
“Yes, everything is simple. It’s people who complicate things.”
“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.”
“The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning.”
“Find your happiness in yourself.”
“You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.”
“Life is meaningless, but worth living, provided you recognize it’s meaningless.”
“The only serious question in life is whether to kill yourself or not.”
“I know of only one duty, and that is to love.”
“An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.”
“We are rebels for a cause, poets with a dream, and we won’t let this world die without a fight.”
“What is a rebel? A man who says no.”
“But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.”
“For ever, I shall be a stranger to myself.”
“There is so much stubborn hope in the human heart.”
“There is no shame in preferring happiness.”
“There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night.”
“One cannot be a part-time nihilist.”
“I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn’t, than live as if there isn’t and to die to find out that there is.”
“Integrity has no need of rules.”
“I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist.”
“Everything considered, a determined soul will always manage.”
“But above all, in order to be, never try to seem.”
“The real 19th century prophet was Dostoevsky, not Karl Marx.”
“Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.”
“A work of art is a confession.”
“You know very well that I no longer think. I am far too intelligent for that.”
“This world, such as it is, is not tolerable. Therefore I need the moon, or happiness, or immortality, I need something which is perhaps demented, but which is not of this world.”
“Thoughts of suicide have got me through many a bad night.”
“Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.”
“There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.”
“Travel, which is like a greater and a graver science, brings us back to ourselves.”
“And never have I felt so deeply at one and the same time so detached from myself and so present in the world.”
“I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.”
“For the absurd man, it is not a matter of explaining and solving, but of experiencing and describing. Everything begins with lucid indifference.”
“Poor and free rather than rich and enslaved. Of course, men want to be both rich and free, and this is what leads them at times to be poor and enslaved.”
“It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.”
“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”
“The absurd has meaning only in so far as it is not agreed to.”
“Nihilism is not only despair and negation, but above all the desire to despair and to negate.”
“All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning.”
“There is always a philosophy for lack of courage.”
“Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.”
“A man who has become conscious of the absurd is for ever bound to it.”
“You will always win if you make an effort, no matter how much. However, if you failed it means you were too lazy.”
“The absurd hero’s refusal to hope becomes his singular ability to live in the present with passion.”
“The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind.”
“I know myself too well to believe in pure virtue.”
“Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can’t be sure.”
“Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it.”
“Nothing in life is worth, turning your back on, if you love it.”
“But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?”
“Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.”
“Betrayal answers betrayal, the mask of love is answered by the disappearance of love.”
“Freedom is not a gift received from the State or leader, but a possession to be won every day by the effort of each and the union of all.”
“This very heart which is mine will forever remain indefinable to me. Between the certainty I have of my existence and the content I try to give to that assurance, the gap will never be filled. Forever I shall be a stranger to myself.”
“Life can be magnificent and overwhelming – that is the whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would almost be easy to live.”
“All I know of morality I learned from football.”
“At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.”
“There is no love of life without despair of life.”
“What is a rebel? A man who says no: but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation.”
“Travel breaks down a kind of inner structure we have. Stripped of our props, deprived of our masks, we are completely on the surface of ourselves.”
“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.”
“The Byronic hero, incapable of love, or capable only of an impossible love, suffers endlessly. He is solitary, languid, his condition exhausts him. If he wants to feel alive, it must be in the terrible exaltation of a brief and destructive action.”
“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.”
“Democracy is not the law of the majority but the protection of the minority.”
“The most knowledgeable person in one domain may be the most ignorant in another.”
“I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.”
“Every minute of life carries with it its miraculous value, and its face of eternal youth.”
“It is always easy to be logical. It is almost impossible to be logical to the bitter end.”
“Every ideology is contrary to human psychology.”
“The harshest winter finds an invincible summer in us.”
“A nihilist is not one who believes in nothing, but one who does not believe in what exists.”
“There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.”
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