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There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

—  Albert Camus

At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise ... that denseness and that strangeness of the world is absurd.

—  Albert Camus

There are places where the mind dies so that a truth which is its very denial may be born.

—  Albert Camus

A sub-clerk in the post-office is the equal of a conqueror if consciousness is common to them.

—  Albert Camus

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

—  Albert Camus

Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.

—  Albert Camus

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.

—  Albert Camus

It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life had to have a meaning to be lived. It now becomes clear, on the contrary, that it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning.

—  Albert Camus

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.

—  Albert Camus

Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence.

—  Albert Camus

May heaven protect us, cher monsieur, from being set on a pedestal by our friends!!!

—  Albert Camus

There is dignity in work only when it is work freely accepted.

—  Albert Camus

You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.

—  Albert Camus

To insure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough, a police force is needed as well.

—  Albert Camus

An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.

—  Albert Camus

Their guilt made me eloquent because I was not its victim.

—  Albert Camus

We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes, and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others.

—  Albert Camus

How can sincerity be a condition of friendship? A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.

—  Albert Camus

To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.

—  Albert Camus

As soon as one does not kill oneself, one must keep silent about life.

—  Albert Camus

How many crimes committed merely because their authors could not endure being wrong!

—  Albert Camus

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.

—  Albert Camus

Greatness consists in trying to be great. There is no other way.

—  Albert Camus

I do not want to believe that death is the gateway to another life. For me, it is a closed door. I do not say it is a step we must all take, but that it is a horrible and dirty adventure.

—  Albert Camus

Mon cher ami, let's not give them any pretext, no matter how small, for judging us!!! Otherwise, we'll be left in shreds. We are forced to take the same precautions as the animal trainer. If, before going into the cage, he has the misfortune to cut himself while shaving, what a feast for the wild animals!!

—  Albert Camus

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?

—  Albert Camus

I enjoyed my own nature to the fullest, and we all know that there lies happiness, although, to soothe one another mutually, we occasionally pretend to condemn such joys as selfishness.

—  Albert Camus

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.

—  Albert Camus

Proof is never definitive, after all; one has to begin again with each new person.

—  Albert Camus

At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.

—  Albert Camus

Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.

—  Albert Camus

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.

—  Albert Camus

I want to know if I can live with what I know, and only than.

—  Albert Camus

More and more, when faced with the world of men, the only reaction is one of individualism. Man alone is an end unto himself. Everything one tries to do for the common good ends in failure.

—  Albert Camus

The struggle to reach the top is itself enough to fulfill the heart of man. One must believe that Sisyphus is happy.

—  Albert Camus

Charm is getting the answer yes without asking a clear question.

—  Albert Camus

To know oneself, one should assert oneself. Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself.

—  Albert Camus

There is only misfortune in not being loved; there is misery in not loving.

—  Albert Camus

Alas, after a certain age every man is responsible for his face.

—  Albert Camus

Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.

—  Albert Camus

An achievement is a bondage. It obliges one to a higher achievement.

—  Albert Camus

It is not rebellion itself which is noble but the demands it makes upon us.

—  Albert Camus

We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

—  Albert Camus

Can one be a saint if God does not exist? That is the only concrete problem I know of today.

—  Albert Camus

We are not certain, we are never certain. If we were we could reach some conclusions, and we could, at last, make others take us seriously.

—  Albert Camus

The principles which men give to themselves end by overwhelming their noblest intentions.

—  Albert Camus

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.

—  Albert Camus

The look of success, when it is worn a certain way, would infuriate a jackass.

—  Albert Camus

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.

—  Albert Camus

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

—  Albert Camus

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

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

—  Albert Camus

True debauchery is liberating because it creates no obligations. In it you possess only yourself; hence it remains the favorite pastime of the great lovers of their own person.

—  Albert Camus

Do not wait for the last judgment. It takes place every day.

—  Albert Camus

Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself. We continue to shape our personality all our life. To know oneself, one should assert oneself.

—  Albert Camus

You cannot acquire experience by making experiments. You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.

—  Albert Camus

To correct a natural indifference I was placed half-way between misery and the sun. Misery kept me from believing that all was well under the sun, and the sun taught me that history wasn't everything.

—  Albert Camus

In short, the moment I grasped that there was something to judge in me, I realized that there was in them an irresistible vocation for judgment.

—  Albert Camus

It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.

—  Albert Camus

People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves.

—  Albert Camus

I was absent at the moment I took up the most space.

—  Albert Camus

A liking for truth at any cost is a passion that spares nothing and that nothing resists. It's a vice, at times a comfort, or a selfishness.

—  Albert Camus

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.

—  Albert Camus