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 | 7,062 visits |
Quotations
| • | The most important thing you do everyday you live is deciding not to kill yourself. 42 |
| • | But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself. 30 |
| • | Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee? 24 |
| • | 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. 19 |
| • | I rebel — therefore we exist. 12 |
| • | In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. 9 |
| • | People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves. 8 |
| • | Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter. 8 |
| • | The need to be always right is the sign of a vulgar mind. 7 |
| • | Having money is a way of being free of money. 7 |
| • | Do not wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day. 7 |
| • | There is not love of life without despair about life. 7 |
| • | Hungary conquered and in chains has done more for freedom and justice than any people for twenty years. 7 |
| • | We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love — first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage. 7 |
| • | It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners. 6 |
| • | Life is meaningless, but worth living, provided you recognize it's meaningless. 6 |
| • | 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. 6 |
| • | The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself. 5 |
| • | I know that man is capable of great deeds. But if he isn't capable of great emotion, well, he leaves me cold. 5 |
| • | Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better. 5 |
| • | Always go too far, because that's where you'll find the truth. 5 |
| • | Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is. 5 |
| • | Life should be lived to the point of tears. 5 |
| • | I know of only one duty, and that is to love. 5 |
| • | Fate is not in man but around him. 5 |
| • | To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others. 5 |
| • | The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown. 5 |
| • | Absolute freedom mocks at justice. Absolute justice denies freedom. To be fruitful, the two ideas must find their limits in each other. 5 |
| • | At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face. 5 |
| • | A novel is never anything but a philosophy put into images. 5 |
| • | A man is more a man through the things he keeps to himself than through those he says. 4 |
| • | You cannot create experience. You must undergo it. 4 |
| • | If something is going to happen to me, I want to be there. 4 |
| • | Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth. 4 |
| • | Idleness is only fatal to the mediocre. 4 |
| • | It takes time to live. Like any work of art, life needs to be thought about. 4 |
| • | The artist reconstructs the world to his plan. 4 |
| • | The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. 4 |
| • | Autumn is a second Spring when every leaf is a flower. 4 |
| • | Man cannot do without beauty, and this is what our era pretends to want to disregard. 4 |
| • | We have exiled beauty; the Greeks took up arms for her. 4 |
| • | There is scarcely any passion without struggle. 3 |
| • | At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman. 3 |
| • | The opposite of an idealist is too often a man without love. 3 |
| • | Every ideology is contrary to human psychology. 3 |
| • | If the world were clear, art would not exist. 3 |
| • | This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. 3 |
| • | 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”) 3 |
| • | Without beauty, love, or danger it would be almost easy to live. 3 |
