Albert Camus Quotes - Page 24

• A sub-clerk in the post office is the equal of a conqueror if consciousness is common to them. All experiences are indifferent in this regard. There are some that do either a service or a disservice to man. They do him a service if he is conscious. Otherwise, that has no importance: a man's failures imply judgment, not of circumstances, but of himself.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Office, Clerks

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.68, Vintage

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• The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.

  Albert Camus

  Fall, Punishment, Rocks

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.119, Vintage

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• We turn our backs on nature; we are ashamed of beauty. Our wretched tragedies have a smell of the office clinging to them, and the blood that trickles from them is the color of printer's ink.

  Albert Camus

  Blood, Color, Smell

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.189, Vintage

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• Knowing what [Christ] knew , knowing all about mankind--ah! who would have thought that the crime is not so much to make others die, but to die oneself--confronted day and night with his innocent crime, it became too difficult to go on. It was better to get it over with, to not defend himself, to die, in order not to be the only one to have survived, and to go elsewhere, where, perhaps, he would be supported.

  Albert Camus

  God, Night, Order

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• Every artist preserves deep within him a single source from which, throughout his lifetime, he draws what he is, and what he says. When the source dries up, the work withers and crumbles.

  Albert Camus

  Artist, Lifetime, Source

  "Pretensions: Adieu, Adieu, Albert Camus" by Joe Queenan, reason.com. March 1990.

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• Our civilization survives in the complacency of cowardly or malignant minds -- a sacrifice to the vanity of aging adolescents

  Albert Camus

  Sacrifice, Vanity, Civilization

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• Sometimes, from beyond the skycrapers, the cry of a tugboat finds you in your insomnia, and you remember that this desert of iron and cement is an island.

  Albert Camus

  New York, Insomnia, Islands

  Albert Camus (1987). “American journals”

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• It happens that the stage sets collapse. Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm – this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the “why” arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.

  Albert Camus

  Friday, Monday, Sleep

  Albert Camus (1955). “The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays”

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• Old women even forget how to love their sons. The heart gets worn out, Monsieur.

  Albert Camus

  Heart, Son, How To Love

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• The more I produce, the less I am certain. On the road along which the artist walks, night falls ever more densely. Finally, he dies blind.

  Albert Camus

  Fall, Artist, Night

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• 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.

  Albert Camus

  Hate, Wish, Crowds

  Albert Camus (2002). “The Stranger”, Spark Notes

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• What more ghastly image can be called up than that of a man betrayed by his body who, simply because he did not die in time, lives out the comedy while awaiting the end, face to face with that God he does not adore, serving him as he served life, kneeling before a void and arms outstretched toward a heaven without eloquence that he knows to be also without depth?

  Albert Camus

  Men, Heaven, Body

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• 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.

  Albert Camus

  Memories, Love You, Heart

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• For there is merely bad luck in not being loved; there is misfortune in not loving.

  Albert Camus

  Love, Luck, Misfortunes

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.201, Vintage

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• The French Revolution gave birth to no artists but only to a great journalist, Desmoulins, and to an under-the-counter writer, Sade. The only poet of the times was the guillotine.

  Albert Camus

  Artist, Revolution, Birth

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• If Nietzsche is correct, that to shame a man is to kill him, then any honest attempt at autobiography will be an act of self-destruction.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Self, Honest

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• Creating is living doubly. The groping, anxious quest of a Proust, his meticulous collecting of flowers, of wallpapers, and of anxieties, signifies nothing else.

  Albert Camus

  Flower, Creating, Anxiety

  Albert Camus (1955). “The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays”

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• We can't do without dominating others or being served.... The essential thing, in sum, is being able to get angry without the other person being able to answer back.

  Albert Camus

  Power, Answers, Able

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• Freedom of the press is perhaps the freedom that has suffered the most from the gradual degradation of the idea of liberty.

  Albert Camus

  Freedom, Ideas, Liberty

  Albert Camus (2012). “Resistance, Rebellion, and Death: Essays”, p.102, Vintage

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• Have you noticed that only death arouses our emotions? How we love thee friends who have just passed away, right? How we admire those master who no longer speak, their mouths full of dirt. We them we are not obligated.

  Albert Camus

  Death, Mouths, Dirt

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• Indeed, men never know how to love. nothing satisfies them. All they know is to dream, to imagine new duties, to look for new countries and new homes. While we women, we know that we must hasten to love, to share the same bed, hold hands, and fear absence. When we women love, we dream of nothing.

  Albert Camus

  Love, Dream, Country

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• Once crime was as solitary as a cry of protest; now it is as universal as science. Yesterday it was put on trial; today it determines the law.

  Albert Camus

  Law, Yesterday, Trials

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.3, Vintage

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• The certainty of a God giving meaning to life far surpasses in attractiveness the ability to behave badly with impunity. The choice would not be hard to make. But there is no choice and that is where the bitterness comes in. The absurd does not liberate; it binds.

  Albert Camus

  Giving, Choices, Bitterness

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.67, Vintage

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• What I believe to be true I must therefore preserve. What seems to me so obvious, even against me, I must support.

  Albert Camus

  Believe, Support, Obvious

  Albert Camus (1955). “The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays”

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• Murder is terribly exhausting.

  Albert Camus

  Murder, Exhausting

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