Albert Camus Quotes - Page 26

• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Many fledgling moralists in those days were going about our town proclaiming there was nothing to be done about it and we should bow to the inevitable. And Tarrou, Rieux, and their friends might give one answer or another, but its conclusion was always the same, their certitude that a fight must be put up, in this way or that, and there must be no bowing down... There was nothing admirable about this attitude; it was merely logical.

  Albert Camus

  Attitude, Fighting, Giving

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

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• The act of love . . . is a confession. Selfishness screams aloud, vanity shows off, or else true generosity reveals itself.

  Albert Camus

  Love, Selfish, Vanity

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Fall”, p.65, Vintage

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• But too many people now climb onto the cross merely to be seen from a greater distance, even if they have to trample somewhat on the one who has been there so long.

  Albert Camus

  Distance, Long, People

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Fall”, p.114, Vintage

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• Absurdism, like methodical doubt, has wiped the slate clean. It leaves us in a blind alley. But, like methodical doubt, it can, by returning upon itself, open up a new field of investigation, and in the process of reasoning then pursues the same course. I proclaim that I believe in nothing and that everything is absurd, but I cannot doubt the validity of my proclamation and I must at least believe in my protest.

  Albert Camus

  Believe, Doubt, Fields

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.10, Vintage

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• In this respect, our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words, they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences. A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they have taken no precautions.

  Albert Camus

  Dream, Taken, Men

  ALBERT CAMUS (1971). “NOBEL PRIZE LIBRARY”

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• …. Query: How contrive not to waste one's time? Answer: By being fully aware of it all the while. Ways in which this can be done: By spending one's days on an uneasy chair in a dentist's waiting-room; by remaining on one's balcony all of a Sunday afternoon; by listening to lectures in a language on doesn't know; by traveling by the longest and least-convenient train routes, and of course standing all the way; by lining up at the box-office of theaters and then not buying a seat; and so forth.

  Albert Camus

  Sunday, Waiting Rooms, Office

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Plague”, p.26, Vintage

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