Albert Camus

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

If, after all, men cannot always make history have meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.

A slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown.

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

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.

Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.

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

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

In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.

A free press can of course be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom it will never be anything but bad. . . . Freedom is nothing else but a chance to bet better, whereas enslavement is a certainty of the worse.

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

If there is a sin against life, it consist perhaps not so much in despairing of life as hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life. Albert Camus

We rarely confide in those who are better than we are.

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

In the depth of winter, I learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

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

Love is the kind of illness that does not spare the inteligent or the dull.

We only know of one duty, and that is to love.

Live to the point of tears.

There are always reasons for murdering a man. But there is no justification for his existence.

I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment, it takes place every day.

In the vast reaches of the dry, cold night, thousands of stars were constantly appearing, and their sparkling icicles, loosened at once, began to slip gradually toward the horizon.

Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Walk beside me and be my friend.

All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning.

There is but one truly philosophical problem, and that is suicide.

I have never been able, really, to regret anything in all my life. I have always been far much too absorbed in the present moment or the immediate future to think back.

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

He who despairs over an event is a coward, but he who holds hope for the human condition is a fool.

When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

It is natural to give a clear view of the world after accepting the idea that it must be clear.

I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically gettin killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying). I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions.

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.

The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily. No great work has ever been based on hatred and contempt. On the contrary, there is not a single true work of art that has not in the end added to the inner freedom of each person who has known and loved it.