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Albert Camus

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Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.
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To know oneself, one should assert oneself.
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Moreover, most people, assuming they had not altogether abandoned religious observances, or did not combine them naively with a thoroughly immoral way of living, had replaced normal religious practice by more or less extravagant superstitions.
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If there were a party of those who aren't sure they're right, I'd belong to it.
(as quoted by Tony Judt)
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There is no fate which cannot be surmounted by scorn.
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Against eternal injustice, man must assert justice, and to protest against the universe of grief, he must create happiness.
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The trigger gave; I felt the smooth underside of the butt; and there, in that noise, sharp and deafening at the same time, is where it all started. I shook off the sweat and the sun. 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.
From L'Étranger
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Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.
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Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.
From The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
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I knew a man who gave twenty years of his life to a scatterbrained woman, sacrificing everything to her, his friendships, his work, the very respectability of his life and who one evening recognized that he had never loved her. He had been bored, thats all, bored like most people. Hence he had made himself out of whole cloth a life full of complications and drama. Something must happen and that explains most human commitments. Something must happen even loveless slavery, even war or death.
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There is but one true philosophical problem and that is suicide.
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Men, too, secrete the inhuman. At certain moments of lucidity, the mechanical aspect of their gestures, their meaningless pantomime makes silly everything that surrounds them. A man is talking on the telephone behind a glass partition; you cannot hear him, but you see his incomprehensible dumb show: you wonder why he is alive. This discomfort in the face of man’s own inhumanity, this incalculable tumble before the image of what we are, this “nausea,” as a writer of today calls it, is also the absurd.
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I am strangely tired, not from having talked so much but at the mere thought of what I still have to say
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Can one be a saint without God?

(...)

- Heroism and sanctity don't really appeal to me . . . What interests me is - being a man.
From The Plague
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There's the risk of being loved...and that would keep me from being happy.
From A Happy Death
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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.
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O young girl, throw yourself again into the water so that I might have a second time the chance to save the two of us!" A second time, eh, what imprudence! Suppose, dear sir, someone actually took our word for it? It would have to be fulfilled. Brr...! the water is so cold! But let's reassure ourselves. It's too late now, it will always be too late. Fortunately!
From The Fall
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Remembrance of things past is just for the rich. For the poor it only marks the faint traces on the path to death.
From The First Man
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Because there is nothing here than invites us to cherish unhappy lovers. Nothing is more vain than to die for love. What we ought to do is live.
From Lyrical and Critical Essays
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Then, already, it had brought to his mind the silence brooding over beds in which he had let men die. There as here it was the same solemn pause, the lull that follows battle; it was the silence of defeat. But the silence now enveloping his dead friend, so dense, so much akin to the nocturnal silence of the streets and of the town set free at last, made Rieux cruelly aware that this defeat was final, the last disastrous battle that ends a war and makes peace itself an ill beyond all remedy. The doctor could not tell if Tarrou had found peace, now that all was over, but for himself he had a feeling that no peace was possible to him henceforth, any more than there can an armistice for a mother bereaved of a son or for a man who buries his friend.
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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.
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Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined. Society has but little connection with such beginnings. The worm is in man's heart. That is where it must be sought. One must follow and understand this fatal game that leads from lucidity in the face of existence to flight from light.
From The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
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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.
From The Plague
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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.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
To know oneself, one should assert oneself.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Moreover, most people, assuming they had not altogether abandoned religious observances, or did not combine them naively with a thoroughly immoral way of living, had replaced normal religious practice by more or less extravagant superstitions.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If there were a party of those who aren't sure they're right, I'd belong to it.
(as quoted by Tony Judt)
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There is no fate which cannot be surmounted by scorn.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Against eternal injustice, man must assert justice, and to protest against the universe of grief, he must create happiness.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The trigger gave; I felt the smooth underside of the butt; and there, in that noise, sharp and deafening at the same time, is where it all started. I shook off the sweat and the sun. 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.
From L'Étranger
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.
From The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I knew a man who gave twenty years of his life to a scatterbrained woman, sacrificing everything to her, his friendships, his work, the very respectability of his life and who one evening recognized that he had never loved her. He had been bored, thats all, bored like most people. Hence he had made himself out of whole cloth a life full of complications and drama. Something must happen and that explains most human commitments. Something must happen even loveless slavery, even war or death.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There is but one true philosophical problem and that is suicide.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Men, too, secrete the inhuman. At certain moments of lucidity, the mechanical aspect of their gestures, their meaningless pantomime makes silly everything that surrounds them. A man is talking on the telephone behind a glass partition; you cannot hear him, but you see his incomprehensible dumb show: you wonder why he is alive. This discomfort in the face of man’s own inhumanity, this incalculable tumble before the image of what we are, this “nausea,” as a writer of today calls it, is also the absurd.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I am strangely tired, not from having talked so much but at the mere thought of what I still have to say
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Can one be a saint without God?

(...)

- Heroism and sanctity don't really appeal to me . . . What interests me is - being a man.
From The Plague
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There's the risk of being loved...and that would keep me from being happy.
From A Happy Death
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
O young girl, throw yourself again into the water so that I might have a second time the chance to save the two of us!" A second time, eh, what imprudence! Suppose, dear sir, someone actually took our word for it? It would have to be fulfilled. Brr...! the water is so cold! But let's reassure ourselves. It's too late now, it will always be too late. Fortunately!
From The Fall
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Remembrance of things past is just for the rich. For the poor it only marks the faint traces on the path to death.
From The First Man
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Because there is nothing here than invites us to cherish unhappy lovers. Nothing is more vain than to die for love. What we ought to do is live.
From Lyrical and Critical Essays
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Then, already, it had brought to his mind the silence brooding over beds in which he had let men die. There as here it was the same solemn pause, the lull that follows battle; it was the silence of defeat. But the silence now enveloping his dead friend, so dense, so much akin to the nocturnal silence of the streets and of the town set free at last, made Rieux cruelly aware that this defeat was final, the last disastrous battle that ends a war and makes peace itself an ill beyond all remedy. The doctor could not tell if Tarrou had found peace, now that all was over, but for himself he had a feeling that no peace was possible to him henceforth, any more than there can an armistice for a mother bereaved of a son or for a man who buries his friend.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined. Society has but little connection with such beginnings. The worm is in man's heart. That is where it must be sought. One must follow and understand this fatal game that leads from lucidity in the face of existence to flight from light.
From The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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.
From The Plague
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
To know oneself, one should assert oneself.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Moreover, most people, assuming they had not altogether abandoned religious observances, or did not combine them naively with a thoroughly immoral way of living, had replaced normal religious practice by more or less extravagant superstitions.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If there were a party of those who aren't sure they're right, I'd belong to it.
(as quoted by Tony Judt)
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There is no fate which cannot be surmounted by scorn.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Against eternal injustice, man must assert justice, and to protest against the universe of grief, he must create happiness.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The trigger gave; I felt the smooth underside of the butt; and there, in that noise, sharp and deafening at the same time, is where it all started. I shook off the sweat and the sun. 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.
From L'Étranger
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.
From The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I knew a man who gave twenty years of his life to a scatterbrained woman, sacrificing everything to her, his friendships, his work, the very respectability of his life and who one evening recognized that he had never loved her. He had been bored, thats all, bored like most people. Hence he had made himself out of whole cloth a life full of complications and drama. Something must happen and that explains most human commitments. Something must happen even loveless slavery, even war or death.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There is but one true philosophical problem and that is suicide.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Men, too, secrete the inhuman. At certain moments of lucidity, the mechanical aspect of their gestures, their meaningless pantomime makes silly everything that surrounds them. A man is talking on the telephone behind a glass partition; you cannot hear him, but you see his incomprehensible dumb show: you wonder why he is alive. This discomfort in the face of man’s own inhumanity, this incalculable tumble before the image of what we are, this “nausea,” as a writer of today calls it, is also the absurd.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I am strangely tired, not from having talked so much but at the mere thought of what I still have to say
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Can one be a saint without God?

(...)

- Heroism and sanctity don't really appeal to me . . . What interests me is - being a man.
From The Plague
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
There's the risk of being loved...and that would keep me from being happy.
From A Happy Death
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
O young girl, throw yourself again into the water so that I might have a second time the chance to save the two of us!" A second time, eh, what imprudence! Suppose, dear sir, someone actually took our word for it? It would have to be fulfilled. Brr...! the water is so cold! But let's reassure ourselves. It's too late now, it will always be too late. Fortunately!
From The Fall
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Remembrance of things past is just for the rich. For the poor it only marks the faint traces on the path to death.
From The First Man
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Because there is nothing here than invites us to cherish unhappy lovers. Nothing is more vain than to die for love. What we ought to do is live.
From Lyrical and Critical Essays
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Then, already, it had brought to his mind the silence brooding over beds in which he had let men die. There as here it was the same solemn pause, the lull that follows battle; it was the silence of defeat. But the silence now enveloping his dead friend, so dense, so much akin to the nocturnal silence of the streets and of the town set free at last, made Rieux cruelly aware that this defeat was final, the last disastrous battle that ends a war and makes peace itself an ill beyond all remedy. The doctor could not tell if Tarrou had found peace, now that all was over, but for himself he had a feeling that no peace was possible to him henceforth, any more than there can an armistice for a mother bereaved of a son or for a man who buries his friend.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined. Society has but little connection with such beginnings. The worm is in man's heart. That is where it must be sought. One must follow and understand this fatal game that leads from lucidity in the face of existence to flight from light.
From The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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.
From The Plague
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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