Albert Camus
If there is a soul, it is a mistake to believe that it is given to us fully created. It is created here, throughout a whole life. And living is nothing else but that long and painful bringing forth.
Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.
The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind.
The world is unimportant and whoever recognizes this conquers his liberty.
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.
A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.
A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.
Abstract Art: A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.
At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures - be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.
But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?
Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.
Don't wait for the last judgment - it takes place every day.
Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.
In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.
Integrity has no need of rules.
It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.
Men are convinced of your arguments, your sincerity, and the seriousness of your efforts only by your death.
Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.
The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.
Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.
We are all special cases.
We call first truths those we discover after all the others.
We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.
We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death, the body maintains its irreparable lead.
When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it. (????)
.. like anyone else who does not have a soul, you cannot stand anyone who has too much of one. Too much soul! That is troublesome, is it not? So, it is called a sickness: the eggheads are justified and happy.
This world, such as it is, is not tolerable. Therefore I need the moon, or happiness, or immortality, I need something which is perhaps demented, but which is not of this world.
All I want is the moon, Helicon. I know in advance what will kill me. I have not yet exhausted all that can make me live. That is why I want the moon.