Quotes by
Albert Camus |
1913-1960 , French writer, Nobel 1957
French novelist, essayist, and playwright, best known for such novels as L’Étranger (1942; The Stranger), La Peste (1947; The Plague), and La Chute (1956; The Fall) and for his work in leftist causes. His views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism. Camus did not consider himself to be an existentialist despite usually being classified as a follower of it, He received the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature.
| 49 quotes | 5,531 visits |
Quotations
| • | The most important thing you do everyday you live is deciding not to kill yourself. 40 |
| • | But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself. 29 |
| • | Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee? 23 |
| • | There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. 18 |
| • | I rebel — therefore we exist. 11 |
| • | In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. 8 |
| • | Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter. 7 |
| • | People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves. 7 |
| • | There is not love of life without despair about life. 6 |
| • | Hungary conquered and in chains has done more for freedom and justice than any people for twenty years. 6 |
| • | We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love — first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage. 6 |
| • | Do not wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day. 6 |
| • | The need to be always right is the sign of a vulgar mind. 6 |
| • | Having money is a way of being free of money. 5 |
| • | 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. 5 |
| • | Life is meaningless, but worth living, provided you recognize it's meaningless. 5 |
| • | It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners. 5 |
| • | At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face. 4 |
| • | A novel is never anything but a philosophy put into images. 4 |
| • | Absolute freedom mocks at justice. Absolute justice denies freedom. To be fruitful, the two ideas must find their limits in each other. 4 |
| • | The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown. 4 |
| • | To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others. 4 |
| • | Fate is not in man but around him. 4 |
| • | I know of only one duty, and that is to love. 4 |
| • | Life should be lived to the point of tears. 4 |
| • | Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is. 4 |
| • | Always go too far, because that's where you'll find the truth. 4 |
| • | Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better. 4 |
| • | I know that man is capable of great deeds. But if he isn't capable of great emotion, well, he leaves me cold. 4 |
| • | The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself. 4 |
| • | Autumn is a second Spring when every leaf is a flower. 3 |
| • | Man cannot do without beauty, and this is what our era pretends to want to disregard. 3 |
| • | We have exiled beauty; the Greeks took up arms for her. 3 |
| • | The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. 3 |
| • | The artist reconstructs the world to his plan. 3 |
| • | It takes time to live. Like any work of art, life needs to be thought about. 3 |
| • | Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth. 3 |
| • | If something is going to happen to me, I want to be there. 3 |
| • | You cannot create experience. You must undergo it. 3 |
| • | A man is more a man through the things he keeps to himself than through those he says. 3 |
| • | This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. 2 |
| • | If the world were clear, art would not exist. 2 |
| • | Maman died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure. Aujourd'hui maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas. (first sentences of “The Stranger”) 2 |
| • | Without beauty, love, or danger it would be almost easy to live. 2 |
| • | Every ideology is contrary to human psychology. 2 |
| • | The opposite of an idealist is too often a man without love. 2 |
| • | Idleness is only fatal to the mediocre. 2 |
| • | At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman. 2 |
| • | There is scarcely any passion without struggle. 2 |
