Albert Camus Quotes - Page 26

• 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.

  Albert Camus

  World, Reform, Tasks

  ALBERT CAMUS (1971). “NOBEL PRIZE LIBRARY”

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• I am just coming out of five years of night, and this orgy of violent lights gives me for the first time the impression of a new continent. An enormous, 50-foot high Camel billboard : a GI with his mouth wide open blows enormous puffs of real smoke. So much bad taste hardly seems imaginable.

  Albert Camus

  New York, Real, Blow

  Albert Camus (1987). “American journals”

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• To those who despair of everything reason cannot provide a faith, but only passion, and in this case it must be the same passion that lay at the root of the despair, namely humiliation and hatred.

  Albert Camus

  Passion, Roots, Hatred

  "Memorable Quotations: Philosophers of Western Civilization". Book by Carol A. Dingle, p. 40, January 1, 2000.

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• Every stone here sweats with suffering, I know that. I have never looked at them without a feeling of anguish. But deep in my heart I know that the most wretched among you have seen a divine face emerge from their darkness. That is the face you are asked to see.

  Albert Camus

  Heart, Sweat, Darkness

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• stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves

  Albert Camus

  Stupidity, Knack, Way

  Albert Camus (1948). “The Plague”, Vintage

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• It is immoral not to tell.

  Albert Camus

  Writing, Immoral

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• Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

  Albert Camus

  History, Encounters, Want

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.248, Vintage

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• The reasoning is classic in its clarity. If God does not exist, Kirilov is god. If God does not exist, Kirilov must kill himself. Kirilov must therefore kill himself to become god. That logic is absurd, but it is what is needed.

  Albert Camus

  Doe, Logic, Classic

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• All that I know most surely about morality and obligations I owe to football.

  Albert Camus

  Football, Morality, Obligation

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• I knew that I had shattered the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I'd been happy. Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness.

  Albert Camus

  Beach, Doors, Silence

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Stranger”, p.59, Vintage

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• When I see a new face, something sets off an alarm bell inside me. 'slow down! Danger!' Even when the attraction is strongest, I am on my guard.

  Albert Camus

  Alarms, Bells, Faces

  Albert Camus (2006). “The fall”, Penguin Modern Classics

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• I knew a pure heart who refused tot be mistrustful.... He had written at his doorstep: "From wherever you are, enter and be welcome". Who do you think responded to this lovely invitation? The militia, who made themselves at home and gutted him.

  Albert Camus

  Trust, Home, Heart

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• Time will prolong time, and life will serve life. In this field that is both limited and bulging with possibilities, everything to himself, except his lucidity, seems unforeseeable to him. What rule, then, could emanate from that unreasonable order? The only truth that might seem instructive to him is not formal: it comes to life and unfolds in men. The absurd mind cannot so much expect ethical rules at the end of its reasoning as, rather, illustrations and the breath of human lives.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Illustration, Order

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

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• The words that reverberate for us at the confines of this long adventure of rebellion are not formulas for optimism, for which we have no possible use in the extremities of our unhappiness, but words of courage and intelligence which, on the shores of the eternal seas, even have the qualities of virtue.

  Albert Camus

  Adventure, Sea, Long

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.303, Vintage

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• They hurt each other without wanting to, just because each represented to the others the cruel and demanding necessity of their lives.

  Albert Camus

  Hurt

  Albert Camus (2013). “The First Man”, p.85, Penguin UK

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• What's natural is the microbe. All the rest-heath, integrity, purity (if you like)-is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never falter. The good man, the man who infects hardly anyone, is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention.

  Albert Camus

  Integrity, Men, Good Man

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• Every man needs slaves like he needs clean air. To rule is to breathe, is it not? And even the most disenfranchised get to breathe. The lowest on the social scale have their spouses or their children.

  Albert Camus

  Children, Men, Air

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• So all a man could win in the conflict between plague and life was knowledge and memories.

  Albert Camus

  Memories, Winning, Men

  Albert Camus (1972). “The Plague”, eBookEden.com

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• To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

  Albert Camus

  Believe, Cutting, Men

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• 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.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Order, Mind

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.22, Vintage

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• Do you believe in God, doctor?" No - but what does that really mean? I'm fumbling in the dark, struggling to make something out. But I've long ceased finding that original.

  Albert Camus

  Believe, Struggle, Mean

  ALBERT CAMUS (1971). “NOBEL PRIZE LIBRARY”

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• It is normal to give away a little of one's life in order not to lose it all.

  Albert Camus

  Life, Order, Giving

  Albert Camus (1963). “Carnets: 1935-1942”

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• The current motto for all of us can only be this: without giving up anything on the plane of justice, yield nothing on the plane of freedom.

  Albert Camus

  Giving Up, Giving, Justice

  "Resistance, Rebellion, and Death: Essays".

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• To think is first of all to create a world (or to limit one's own world, which comes to the same thing).

  Albert Camus

  Art, Philosophy, Thinking

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.99, Vintage

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• Most men are like me. They cannot live in a universe where the most bizarre thought can in one second enter into the realm of reality--where, most often, it does enter, like a knife in a heart.

  Albert Camus

  Heart, Reality, Men

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