Albert Camus (1913–1960) was a French philosopher, author, dramatist and journalist. He was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. His works include The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall, and The Rebel.
Here is a collection of Albert Camus most famous quotes: Albert Camus Quotes about Life, Love, Happiness and Friendship. Quotes and Sayings on Existentialism, Humanity, Mankind and Absurdism. by Albert Camus.
Albert Camus Quotes and Sayings
You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of.
But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.
Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present.
Always go too far, because that's where you'll find the truth.
Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Walk beside me; just be my friend.
You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.
Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.
At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman.
Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.
No matter what cause one defends, it will suffer permanent disgrace if one resorts to blind attacks on crowds of innocent people.
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune.
Life is meaningless, but worth living, provided you recognize it's meaningless.
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.
The Four Conditions of Happiness: Life in the open air, Love for another being, Freedom from ambition, Creation.
A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.
Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.
Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.
People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves.
You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.
Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.
I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't.
To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.
Do not wait for the last judgment. It comes every day.
Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
I know of only one duty, and that is to love.
Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.
The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.
Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?
Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.
Live to the point of tears.
When I look at my life and its secret colours, I feel like bursting into tears.
I used to advertise my loyalty and I don't believe there is a single person I loved that I didn't eventually betray.
Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.
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.
An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. 'Can they be brought together?' This is a practical question. We must get down to it. 'I despise intelligence' really means: 'I cannot bear my doubts'.
O light! This is the cry of all the characters of ancient drama brought face to face with their fate. This last resort was ours, too, and I knew it now. In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.
I have no idea what's awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing.
What is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying.
The literal meaning of life is whatever you're doing that prevents you from killing yourself.
Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter.
There is scarcely any passion without struggle.
Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.
Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.
It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.
The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits.
There is not love of life without despair about life.
I rebel; therefore I exist.
Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.
Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death. So long as you are alive, your case is doubtful; you have a right only to their skepticism.
I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world.
Life can be magnificent and overwhelming -- that is the whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would almost be easy to live.
If something is going to happen to me, I want to be there.
What is a rebel? A man who says no.
Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.
Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.
Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.
I know that man is capable of great deeds. But if he isn't capable of great emotion, well, he leaves me cold.
I would rather live my life as if there is a god and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is.
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.
The most important thing you do everyday you live is deciding not to kill yourself.
I love life - that's my real weakness. I love it so much that I am incapable of imagining what is not life.
Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it.
There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night.
I had been right, I was still right, I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I hadn't done that. I hadn't done this thing but I had done another. And so?
I realized then that a man who had lived only one day could easily live for a hundred years in prison. He would have enough memories to keep him from being bored.
You can't create experience, you undergo it.
There are crimes of passion and crimes of logic. The boundary between them is not clearly defined.
Always there comes an hour when one is weary of one's work and devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart.
Nothing in life is worth, turning your back on, if you love it.
We are all special cases.
The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.
I know simply that the sky will last longer than I.
I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L'Illustration. Something desperate, you know.
And never have I felt so deeply at one and the same time so detached from myself and so present in the world.
The need to be right - the sign of a vulgar mind.
After awhile you could get used to anything.
Peace is the only battle worth waging.
Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.
Mostly, I could tell, I made him feel uncomfortable. He didn't understand me, and he was sort of holding it against me. I felt the urge to reassure him that I was like everybody else, just like everybody else. But really there wasn't much point, and I gave up the idea out of laziness.
But, you know, I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don't really appeal to me, I imagine. What interests me is being a man.
A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.
Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.
The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable.
If we believe in nothing, if nothing has any meaning and if we can affirm no values whatsoever, then everything is possible and nothing has any importance.
Sometimes at night I would sleep open-eyed underneath a sky dripping with stars. I was alive then.
We all carry within us places of exile, our crimes, our ravages. Our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to transform them in ourselves and others.
Life is a sum of all your choices. So, what are you doing today?
A man devoid of hope and conscious of being so has ceased to belong to the future.
Integrity has no need of rules.
It is better to burn than to disappear.
I don't want to be a genius-I have enough problems just trying to be a man.
Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee? But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.
I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.
For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.
I've never really had much of an imagination. But still I would try to picture the exact moment when the beating of my heart would no longer be going on inside my head.
A person's life purpose is nothing more than to rediscover, through the detours of art or love or passionate work, those one or two images in the presence of which his heart first opened.
I would like to be able to breathe— to be able to love her by memory or fidelity. But my heart aches. I love you continuously, intensely.
A man is more a man through the things he keeps to himself than through those he says.
A man wants to earn money in order to be happy, and his whole effort and the best of a life are devoted to the earning of that money. Happiness is forgotten; the means are taken for the end.
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.
Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose further developments, a future - and also because we live as if our only task was precisely to have relationships with other people.
Your success and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them. But to be happy it is essential not to be too concerned with others. Consequently, there is no escape. Happy and judged, or absolved and wretched.
He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.
It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.
I like people who dream or talk to themselves interminably; I like them, for they are double. They are here and elsewhere.
Nothing in the world is worth turning one's back on what one loves.
Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
But what does it mean, the plague? It's life, that's all.
Rebellion cannot exist without a strange form of love.
They knew now that if there is one thing one can always yearn for, and sometimes attain, it is human love.
If absolute truth belongs to anyone in this world, it certainly does not belong to the man or party that claims to possess it.
For who would dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for a single moment's human suffering.
If there were a party of those who aren't sure they're right, I'd belong to it.
One always has exaggerated ideas about what one doesn't know.
What made me run away was doubtless not so much the fear of settling down, but of settling down permanently in something ugly.
Don't believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves.
But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?
The habit of despair is worse than despair itself.
But the heart has its own memory and I have forgotten nothing.
The only serious question in life is whether to kill yourself or not.
I continue to believe that this world has no ultimate meaning. But I know that something in it has a meaning and that is man, because he is the only creature to insist on having one
And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness.
But sometimes it takes more courage to live than to shoot yourself.
Well, personally, I've seen enough of people who die for an idea. I don't believe in heroism; I know it's easy and I've learned that it can be murderous. What interests me is living and dying for what one loves.
I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.
We are all exceptional cases. We all want to appeal against something! Each of us insists on being innocent at all cost, even if he has to accuse the whole human race and heaven itself.
But above all, in order to be, never try to seem.
Maman used to say that you can always find something to be happy about. In my prison, when the sky turned red and a new day slipped into my cell, I found out that she was right.
There are more things to admire in men then to despise.
We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking.
At that time, I often thought that if I had had to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but look up at the sky flowing overhead, little by little I would have gotten used to it.
We must learn how to lend ourselves to dreaming when dreams lend themselves to us.
The absurd is lucid reason noting its limits.
We are all born mad, some remain so.
For the first time in a long time I thought about Maman. I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a 'fiancé,' why she had played at beginning again. Even there, in that home where lives were fading out, evening was a kind of wistful respite. So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again. Nobody, nobody had the right to cry over her. And I felt ready to live it all again too.
Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.
Of course, true love is exceptional - two or three times a century, more or less. The rest of the time there is vanity or boredom.
All I can say is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims– and as far as possible one must refuse to be on the side of the pestilence.
There is a life and there is a death, and there are beauty and melancholy between.
There is a terrible emptiness in me, an indifference that hurts.
After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.
Beauty, no doubt, does not make revolutions. But a day will come when revolutions will have need of beauty.
It is necessary to fall in love – the better to provide an alibi for all the despair we are going to feel anyway.
Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.
Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.
A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.
A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.
Don't wait for the last judgment - it takes place every day.
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.
I felt the urge to reassure him that I was like everybody else, just like everybody else.
In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limits that it discovers in itself - limits where minds meet, and in meeting, begin to exist.
You are forgiven for your happiness and your successes only if you generously consent to share them.
Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.
Believe me, for certain men at least, not taking what one doesn't desire is the hardest thing in the world.
It is necessary to fall in love... if only to provide an alibi for all the random despair you are going to feel anyway.
We're going forward, but nothing changes.
Violence is both unavoidable and unjustifiable.
I have a very old and very faithful attachment for dogs. I like them because they always forgive.
Charm is a way of getting the answer 'Yes' without asking a clear question.
My chief occupation, despite appearances, has always been love.
Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself.
You will never be able to experience everything. So, please, do poetical justice to your soul and simply experience yourself.
We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.
At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.
We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love - first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.
To feel absolutely right is the beginning of the end.
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