Albert Camus Quotes - Page 20

• The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

  Albert Camus

  Artist, Judging, Community

  ALBERT CAMUS (1971). “NOBEL PRIZE LIBRARY”

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• No excuses ever, for anyone; that is my principle at the outset. I deny the good intention, the respectable mistake, the indiscretion, the extenuating circumstance. With me there is no giving of absolution or blessing.

  Albert Camus

  Mistake, Blessing, Giving

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Fall”, p.131, Vintage

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• When the throne of God is overturned, the rebel realizes that it is now his own responsibility to create the justice, order, and unity that he sought in vain within his own condition, and in this way to justify the fall of God. Then begins the desperate effort to create, at the price of crime and murder if necessary, the dominion of man.

  Albert Camus

  Fall, Responsibility, Men

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.25, Vintage

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• 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.

  Albert Camus

  Art, Work, Simple

  Albert Camus (2012). “Lyrical and Critical Essays”, p.17, Vintage

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• Thus, in a middle course between these heights and depths, they drifted through life rather than lived, the prey of aimless days and sterile memories, like wandering shadows that could have acquired substance only by consenting to root themselves in the solid earth of their distress.

  Albert Camus

  Memories, Roots, Shadow

  Albert Camus (1960). “The plague: translated from the French”

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• Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end. It arouses a revolt that can become fruitful

  Albert Camus

  Steps, Accepting, Dead Ends

  Albert Camus (2012). “Lyrical and Critical Essays”, p.346, Vintage

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• I know myself too well to believe in pure virtue.

  Albert Camus

  Believe, Virtue, Wells

  Albert Camus (1965). “Notebooks, 1942-1951”

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• There is a metaphysical honour in ending the world's absurdity. Conquest or play-acting, multiple loves, absurd revolt are tributes that man pays to his dignity in a campaign in which he is defeated in advance.... War cannot be negated. One must live it or die of it. So it is with the absurd: it is a question of breathing with it, of recognizing its lessons and recovering their flesh. In this regard the absurd joy par excellence is creation. "Art and nothing but art", said Nietzsche, "we have art in order not to die of the truth."

  Albert Camus

  Art, War, Men

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• Turbulent childhood, adolescent daydreams in the drone of the bus's motor, mornings, unspoiled girls, beaches, young muscles always at the peak of their effort, evening's slight anxiety in a sixteen-year-old-heart, lust for life, fame, and ever the same sky through the years, unfailing in strength and light, itself insatiable, consuming one by one over a period of months the victims stretched out in the form of crosses on the beach at the deathlike hour of noon.

  Albert Camus

  Girl, Beach, Morning

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• If there is a soul, it is a mistake to believe that it is given to us fully created. It is created here, throughout a whole life. And living is nothing else but that long and painful bringing forth.

  Albert Camus

  Mistake, Believe, Long

  Albert Camus (1965). “Notebooks, 1942-1951”

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• For what gives value to travel is fear. It breaks down a kind of inner structure we have. Travel robs us of such refuge. Far from our own people, our own language, stripped of all our props, deprived of our masks (one doesn't know the fare on the streetcars, or anything else), we are completely on the surface of ourselves.

  Albert Camus

  Kind, Breaking Down, Mask

  "Lyrical and Critical Essays".

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• For the existentials, negation is their God. To be precise, that god is maintained only through the negation of human reason. But, like suicides, gods change with men.

  Albert Camus

  Suicide, Men, Atheism

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• What would become of the world if the condemned started to confide their heartaches to the executioners?

  Albert Camus

  Friends, Sympathy, Heartache

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• We're all special cases.

  Albert Camus

  Special, Cases

  'La Chute' p. 95

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• My profession lent itself nicely to my vocation for heights. It freed me of any bitterness towards my fellow men, who were alwaysin my debt, without my owing them anything. It placed me above the judge whom, I in turn judged, above the defendant whom I forced into gratitude.

  Albert Camus

  Gratitude, Men, Law

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• Great novelists are philosopher novelists - that is, the contrary of thesis-writers.

  Albert Camus

  Writing, Novelists, Philosopher

  "Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus)". Book by Albert Camus (Chapter 1: An Absurd Reasoning), 1955.

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• I hope the dogs don't bark tonight. I always think it's mine

  Albert Camus

  Dog, Thinking, Tonight

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Stranger”, p.46, Vintage

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• One dies if necessary, one breaks rather than bending. But I bend, because I continue to love myself.

  Albert Camus

  Bending, Love Myself, Break

  Albert Camus (1957). “The fall”

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• But when a man has had only four hours' sleep he isn't sentimental. He sees things as they are: that is to say, he sees them in the garish light of justice; hideous, witless justice.

  Albert Camus

  Sleep, Men, Light

  ALBERT CAMUS (1971). “NOBEL PRIZE LIBRARY”

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• None of the evils which totalitarianism ... claims to remedy is worse than totalitarianism itself.

  Albert Camus

  Evil, Claims, Remedy

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• Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.

  Albert Camus

  Death, Punishment, Dying

  "Reflections on the Guillotine". Book by Albert Camus, 1957.

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• 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 lived it another. I had done this and I hadn t done that. I hadn t done this thing and I had done another. And so?

  Albert Camus

  Done, Way, Wells

  "The Stranger". Book by Albert Camus, 1942.

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• One cannot be a part-time nihilist.

  Albert Camus

  Nihilism, Nihilist, Part Time

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• There are some individuals who have too strong a craving, a will, and a nostalgia for happiness ever to reach it. They always retain a bitter and passionate aftertaste, and that's the best they can hope for.

  Albert Camus

  Happiness, Strong, Passionate

  Albert Camus, Jean Grenier (2003). “Correspondence, 1932-1960”, p.17, U of Nebraska Press

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• 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.

  Albert Camus

  Freedom, Thinking, Belief

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.57, Vintage

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