Camus Quotes

Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead Walk beside me… just be my friend

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.

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

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

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

Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?

Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.

There are perhaps many causes worth dying for, but to me, certainly, there are none worth killing for.

Live to the point of tears.

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

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

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

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion." [The Minotaur]

I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't.

Always go too far, because that's where you'll find the truth

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.

An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. "Can they be brought together?" This is a practical question. We must get down to it. "I despise intelligence" really means: "I cannot bear my doubts.

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

I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.

Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.

When I look at my life and its secret colours, I feel like bursting into tears.

Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present.

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

Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.

What is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying.

I used to advertise my loyalty and I don't believe there is a single person I loved that I didn't eventually betray.

There is scarcely any passion without struggle.

At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman.

When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune.

Life can be magnificent and overwhelming -- that is the whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would almost be easy to live.

I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist.

I had only a little time left and I didn't want to waste it on God.

I know that man is capable of great deeds. But if he isn't capable of great emotion, well, he leaves me cold.

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.

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

Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter.

Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure.

Do not wait for the last judgment. It comes every day.

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.

I have no idea what's awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing.

Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.

I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world.

O light! This is the cry of all the characters of ancient drama brought face to face with their fate. This last resort was ours, too, and I knew it now. In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.

If something is going to happen to me, I want to be there.

There is not love of life without despair about life.

You can't create experience, you undergo it.

We are all special cases.

Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.

Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep

I would rather live my life as if there is a god and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is.

The literal meaning of life is whatever you're doing that prevents you from killing yourself.

I rebel; therefore I exist.

It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.

I love life - that’s my real weakness. I love it so much that I am incapable of imagining what is not life.

If we believe in nothing, if nothing has any meaning and if we can affirm no values whatsoever, then everything is possible and nothing has any importance.

Have you no hope at all? And do you really live with the thought that when you die, you die, and nothing remains?" "Yes," I said.

Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.

What is a rebel? A man who says no.

The evil that is in the world almost always comes from ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.

Au milieu de l'hiver, j'ai découvert en moi un invincible été.

Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee? But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.

Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.

The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits.

The most important thing you do everyday you live is deciding not to kill yourself.

After awhile you could get used to anything.

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.

Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it.

And never have I felt so deeply at one and the same time so detached from myself and so present in the world.

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest — whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories — comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer.

I know simply that the sky will last longer than I.

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

Always there comes an hour when one is weary of one's work and devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart.

But, you know, I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don't really appeal to me, I imagine. What interests me is being a man.

Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn’t have to be a walk during which you’ll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don’t find meaning but 'steal' some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.

The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not. Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end. Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm. There is only one serious question. And that is: Who knows how to make love stay? Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.

I had been right, I was still right, I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I hadn't done that. I hadn't done this thing but I had done another. And so?

I realized then that a man who had lived only one day could easily live for a hundred years in prison. He would have enough memories to keep him from being bored

I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L'Illustration. Something desperate, you know.

Peace is the only battle worth waging.

Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.

It is better to burn than to disappear.

The need to be right - the sign of a vulgar mind.

There are crimes of passion and crimes of logic. The boundary between them is not clearly defined.

There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

Nothing in life is worth, turning your back on, if you love it.

A man devoid of hope and conscious of being so has ceased to belong to the future.

Mother used to say that however miserable one is, there’s always something to be thankful for. And each morning, when the sky brightened and light began to flood my cell, I agreed with her.

And he knew, also, what the old man was thinking as his tears flowed, and he, Rieux, thought it too: that a loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one's work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart.

It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I'd been happy, and that I was happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.

Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified at having, for years, heard nothing which sounded human. It is always the same words telling the same lies. And the fact that men accept this, that the people’s anger has not destroyed these hollow clowns, strikes me as proof that men attribute no importance to the way they are governed; that they gamble – yes, gamble – with a whole part of their life and their so called 'vital interests.

Don't lies eventually lead to the truth? And don't all my stories, true or false, tend toward the same conclusion? Don't they all have the same meaning? So what does it matter whether they are true or false if, in both cases, they are significant of what I have been and what I am? Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar than into the man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.

My dear, In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love. In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile. In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm. I realized, through it all, that… In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back. Truly yours, Albert Camus” I like this because only one part is usually quoted but the full quote has such symmetry.

Mostly, I could tell, I made him feel uncomfortable. He didn't understand me, and he was sort of holding it against me. I felt the urge to reassure him that I was like everybody else, just like everybody else. But really there wasn't much point, and I gave up the idea out of laziness.

She was wearing a pair of my pajamas with the sleeves rolled up. When she laughed I wanted her again. A minute later she asked me if I loved her. I told her it didn't mean anything but that I didn't think so. She looked sad. But as we were fixing lunch, and for no apparent reason, she laughed in such a way that I kissed her.

The evil in the world comes almost always from ignorance, and goodwill can cause as much damage as ill-will if it is not enlightened. People are more often good than bad, though in fact that is not the question. But they are more or less ignorant and this is what one calls vice or virtue, the most appalling vice being the ignorance that thinks it knows everything and which consequently authorizes itself to kill. The murderer's soul is blind, and there is no true goodness or fine love without the greatest possible degree of clear-sightedness.

Friendship is less simple. It is long and hard to obtain but when one has it there's no getting rid of it; one simply has to cope with it. Don't think for a minute that your friends will telephone you every evening, as they ought to, in order to find out if this doesn't happen to be the evening when you are deciding to commit suicide, or simply whether you don't need company, whether you are not in the mood to go out. No, don't worry, they'll ring up the evening you are not alone, when life is beautiful. As for suicide, they would be more likely to push you to it, by virtue of what you owe to yourself, according to them. May heaven protect us, cher Monsieur, from being set upon a pedestal by our friends!

She was breathing deeply, she forgot the cold, the weight of beings, the insane or static life, the long anguish of living or dying. After so many years running from fear, fleeing crazily, uselessly, she was finally coming to a halt. At the same time she seemed to be recovering her roots, and the sap rose anew in her body, which was no longer trembling. Pressing her whole belly against the parapet, leaning toward the wheeling sky, she was only waiting for her pounding heart to settle down, and for the silence to form in her. The last constellations of stars fell in bunches a little lower on the horizon of the desert, and stood motionless. Then, with an unbearable sweetness, the waters of the night began to fill her, submerging the cold, rising gradually to the center of her being, and overflowing wave upon wave to her moaning mouth. A moment later, the whole sky stretched out above her as she lay with her back against the cold earth.