Words of Wisdom from Albert Camus

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

I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints

Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose further developments, a future-- and also because we live as if our only task was precisely to have relationships with other people

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.

As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alice with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself-- so like a brother, really-- I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.

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.

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

A stranger to myself and to the world armed solely with a thought that negates itself as soon as it asserts, what is this condition in which I can have peace only by refusing to know...

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.

In a universe suddenly divested of illusion and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger.  His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land.

One cannot be a part time nihilist.

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.

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 your skepticism.

We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile.  And now we know where it lives, that it is inside ourselves.

There exists an obvious fact that seems utterly moral; namely, that a man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.

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

A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.

Nihilism is not only despair and negation, but above all the desire to despair and to negate.

He recognized in himself that power to forget that only childen have, and the innocent.  Innocent, overwhelmed by joy, he understood at last that he was made for happiness.

Believe me, there is no such thing as great suffering, great regret, great memory...Everything is forgotten, even a great love.  That's what's sad about life, and also wonderful about it.  There is only one way of looking at things, a way that comes to you every once and a while.  That's why it's good to have had love in your life at all, to have had an unhappy passion-- it gives you an alibi for the vague despairs we all suffer from.

Seeing the rows of cypress trees leading up to the hills to the sky, and the houses standing out here and there against that red and green earth, I was able to understand Maman better.  Evenings in that part of the country must have been a kind of sad relief.  But today, with the sun bearing down, making the whole landscape shimmer with heat, it was inhuman and oppressive.

The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.

Looking back on it, I wasn't unhappy.  When  I was a student, I had lots of ambition like that.  But when I had to give up my studies I learned very quickly that none of it really mattered.

As always, whenever I wanted to get rid of someone I'm not really listening to, I made it appear as if I agreed.  'You see, you see!' he said.  'You do believe, don't you, and you're to place your trust in Him aren't you'  Obviously, I again said no.  He fell back in his chair.

And yet something had changed, since it was back to my cell that I went to wait for the next day...as if familiar paths traced in summer skies could lead as easily to prison as to the sleep of the innocent.

Everything was happening without my participation.  My fate was being decided without anyone so much as asking my opinion.  There were times when I felt like saying, 'Wait a minute!  Who's the accused here? Being the accused counts for something.  And I have something to say!'  But on second thought, I didn't really have anything to say.

And of all the jubilation of the air that can be felt outdoors, of all that joy spread out over the world, I can see only shadows of branches playing on white curtains.

One thinks one has cut oneself off from the world, but it is enough to see an olive tree upright in the golden dust, or beaches glistening in the morning sun, to feel this separation melt away.  Thus with me.

Every minute of life carries with it its miraculous value, and its face of eternal youth.

Neither despair nor joy seems justified before this sky and the shining suffocating heat pouring down from it.

I must start to build again after this long period of anguish and despair.  Finally the sun and my panting body.  Keep silent-- and have confidence in myself.

Oh, my untouched moments of happiness are already drifting away and offering no more help in the gloom of the evening than a young woman's smile or the understanding glance of shared friendship.

But even within this sadness I feel a great leap of joy and a great desire to love simply at the sight of a hill against the evening sky.

An hour of tenderness and despair, with nothing to embrace, nothing at whose feet to throw oneself, overcome with gratitude.

No, Caligula is not dead.  He is there, and there.  He is in each one of you.  If you were given the power, if you had the courage, if you loved life, you would see this monster or this angel that you carry within yourselves break loose.  Our century is dying for having accepted values, for having believed that things could be made beautiful and cease to be absurd. Farewell.  I am going back into history, where those who are afraid to love too much have held me prisoner for so long.

The most dangerous temptation:  to be like nothing at all.

A time comes when one can no longer feel the emotion of love.  The only thing left is tragedy. Living for someone or something no longer has any meaning.  Nothing seems to keep its meaning except the idea of dying for something.

In the evening, the gentleness of the world on the bay.  There are days when the world lies, days when it tells the truth.  It is telling the truth this evening -- with what sad and insistent beauty.

Have no more to do with this empty heart -- reject everything which dries it up.  If the living waters are eleswhere, why stay here?

Everything is decided.  It is simple and straightforward.  But then human suffering interevenes, and alters all our plans.

Give up the tyrrany of female charm.

On what should the heart base its actions?  Love?  Nothing is less reliable.  We can know what the pains of love are like, but not love itself.  Here, it is deprivation, regret, and empty hands. I shall never have the courage; I am left with anguish.  A hell where everything presupposes paradise.  It is hell, nevertheless. What I call life and love is whatever leaves me empty.  Departure, constraint, breaches of love or friendship, my heart scattered in darkness within me, this salt taste of tears and love.

But everything, the sun, the slight breeze, the whiteness of the asphodels, the already hard blue sky, brings to mind the summer, the gilded youth of its daughters and sunburned sons, passions coming to life, long hours in the sun, and the sudden softness of the evenings.  What other meaning can we find to our days but thus, and the lesson we draw from this plateau:  a birth, a death, and, between the two, beauty and melancholy?

You would not write about loneliness so much if you knew how to get the most out of it.

He can be completely explained by his habits, of which the most deadly is to stay in bed.  He can't do anything about it.  And what he wants to become, what he admires and dreams about, is exactly the opposite.  He longs for a work bron of the very opposite of his habits -- one born of the resolutions that he makes.

I can understand you, but I cease to agree when you try to base your life on this despair, maintain that everything is equally pointless, and withdraw behind your disgust.  For despair is a feeling, and not a permanent condition.  You cannot stay on in despair.  And feelings must give way to a clear view of things.

Overcome this as well? I must.  But this unceasing effort is not devoid of sadness.  Could this at least have been spared us?  But this weariness must be overcome as well.  Nothing of it will be lost.  One evening, when we look in the mirror, we see a deeper line around our mouth. What is it?  The stuff from which I made the happiness I overcame.

It's there, that's where it really is, and we were looking for it in the sky and the world's indifference. It is in this terrible loneliness both of the combatants and of the non- combatants, in this humiliated despair that we all feel, in the baseness that we feel growing in our faces as the days go by. The reign of beasts has begun.

The daughter of the potter Dibutasdes loved  a young man and traced the outline of his shadow on a wall. Her father, seeing her sketch, discovered the style of ornamentation used on Greek vases.  Love is at the beginning of all things.

A love which cannot bear to be faced with reality is not a real love.  But then, it is the privilege of noble hearts not to be able to love.

This heart, this little sound that has been with me for so long, how can I imagine that it will ever cease beating, how can I imagine this at the very moment when. . .

1.  The wonderous poetry that precedes love. 2.  The man who makes a failure of everything, even his death. 3.  In our youth, we attach ourselves more easily to a landscape than ot a man. It is because landscapes allow themselves to be interpreted.

Marcel.  Well, we're not rich, but we eat well.  Look at my grandson now, he eats more than his father.  His father needs a pound of bread, he needs two.  And you can pile on the sausage and sardines. Sometimes when he's finished he says:  "Yum, Yum," and goes on eating.

"It doesn't apply."  True novel.  A man defends a faith all his life. His mother dies.  He gives up everything.  But the truth of his faith has not really changed.  It doesn't apply, that's all.

In the case of voluntary self-denial, one can go without food for six weeks. (Water is sufficient.)  When famine deprives us of food, ten days at the most. Reservoir of real energy.

When he reached the distant summit and saw the immense countryside stretching out before him, he felt not the calm peace of love but a kind of inner pact which he was signing with this alien nature, a truce concluded between two hard and savage forces, the intimacy of enemies rather than the ease of friendship.

Now, when the night was overflowing with stars, the gestures stood out against the sky's immense and silent face.

So close to me at night, in the empty streets, that as I walked there alone my longing to weep at last finds release.  The wound that lay open within me begins to heal.

Am I happy or unhappy? It's not a very important question.  I live with such frenzied intensity.

If I carry on like this, I shall certainly end by dying happy.  I shall have eaten up all my hope.

Things and people are waiting for me, and doubtless I am waiting for them and desiring them with all my strength and sadness. But, here, I earn the right to be alive by silence and by secrecy. The miracle of not having to talk about oneself.

"I recognize only one duty, and that is to love."  And, as far as everything else is concerned, I say no.  I say no with all my strength.  The ledger stones tell me that this is useless, that life is "col sol levante, sol sol cadente."  But I cannot see what my revolt loses by being useless, and I cannot feel what it gains.

He woke up covered in sweat, his clothes all rumpled, and wandered around the flat for a moment.  Then he lit a cigarette and sat down, his mind a blank, looking at the creases in his crumpled trousers.  His mouth was full of the bitter taste of sleep and tobacco.  Around him, his soft and flabby day plashed like ooze.

The rain as thick as oil on the windows. . .

We haven't the time to be ourselves.  All we have time for is happiness.

". . . Basically," says M., "I'm a dangerous fanatic."

"The mistake," said M., "lies in thinking that you must choose, that you must do what you want and that there are conditions for happiness.  Happiness either is or it isn't.  It's the will to happiness which matters, a kind of vast, ever present awareness. Everything else -- women, art, worldy triumphs -- are just so many pretexts.  An empty canvas for us to decorate."

What attracts me in an idea is always its piquant and original quality -- what is new and superficial in it.  I might as well admit it.

C., who plays at seducing people, who gives too much to everybody, but whose feelings never last.  Who needs to  seduce, to win love and friendship, and who is incapable of both. A fine character to have in a novel, but lamentable as a friend.

One thinks differently about the same thing in the morning and in the evening.  But where is truth, in the night thought or in the spirit or midday?  Two replies, two races of men.

The temptation shared by all forms of intelligence: cynicism.

The misery and greatness of this world: it offers no truths, but only objects for love.

Caligula.  "I need people to keep silent around me. I need living beings to be silent so that the fearful turmoil in my heart can also come to an end."

Lying down, he smiled clumsily and his eyes glistened.  She felt all her love flood into her throat and tears come into her eyes. She threw herself on his lips and crushed her tears between their two faces.  She wept into his mouth, while he tasted in these salt lips all the bitterness of their love.

Cf. the degredation involved in all forms of suffering.  One must not give in to emptiness. Try to conquer and "fulfill." Time -- don't waste it.

In every life, there are a great number of small emotions and a small number of great emotions. If you make a choice: two lives and two types of literature. But, in fact, they are two monsters.

"The earth would be a magnificent cage for animals totally lacking in humanity."

And this heart, now closed to so much, can still be touched by the memory of the secret gesture she would make when she turned around and threw herself into my arms when I begged her to forgive me.

And on days like these, it seemed that the flame which rose in us when we held hands was the same one which we saw dancing in the shop windows, in the hearts of the workmen who had turned around to look at their children, and in the depths of the pure and icy December sky.

The deputy for Constantine who is elected for the third time.  At noon on election day he dies.  In the evening, people go to his house to cheer him.  His wife goes out on the balcony and tells them that her husband is a little tired. Shortly afterwards, the corpse is elected deputy.  Most appropriate.

Death and a writer's work.  Just before dying, he has his last work read over to him.  He still hasn't said what he had to say.  He orders it to be burned.  And he dies with nothing to console him -- and with something snapping in his heart like a broken chord.

The little couple in the train.  Both ugly.  She hangs on to him, laughs, flirts, tries to seduce him. He looks gloomy, is embarrassed that everyone can see him being loved by a woman he is not proud of.

By a strange but natural reaction, she imagined that it was the things which hurt her most that caused suffering to the man she loved.  She had so accustomed herself to doing without hope that as soon as she tried to understand this man's life, she always saw only what was unfavorable to herself.  And that was exactly what annoyed him.

Nostalgia for the life of others.  This is because, seen from the outside, another's life forms a unit.  Whereas ours, seen from the inside, seems broken up.  We are still chasing after an illusion of unity.

Living with one's passions amounts to living with one's sufferings, which are the counterpoise, the corrective, the balance, and the price.  When a man has learned -- and not on paper -- how to overcome his longing to flee, the illusion that others may share, then he has little left to learn.

Brute physical desire is easy.  But desire at the same time as affection calls for time.  One has to travel through the whole land of love before finding the flame of desire.  Is that why it is always so hard to desire, in the beginning, what one loves?

One must have the strength to choose what one preferse and cling to it.  Otherwise it's better to die.

I cannot live without beauty.  That's what makes me weak in the face of certain people.

He who despairs of events is a coward, but he who has hope for the human lot is a fool.

One writes in moments of despair.  But what is despair?

Nothing can be based on love: it is flight, anguish, wonderful moments or hasty fall.  But it is not. . .

People always think that a man commits suicide for a reason.  But he may very well commit suicide for two reaosns.

The most serious problem facing minds today:  conformity.

Peace would consist of loving in silence.  But there is conscience, and the person; one must speak out.  Loving becomes hell.

To overcome?  But anguish is just that, the thing to which one is never superior.

She gave him the pleasure of vanity.  And this is why he was faithful to her.

One looks for peace and turns to human beings to get it from them.  But they can give nothing to begin with but madness and confusion.  It must be sought elsewhere, yet the heavens are mute.  And then, but only then, can one return to human beings, since, lacking peace, they give you sleep.

Time does not go fast when one observes it.  It feels watched.  But it takes advantage of our distractions.  Perhaps there are even two times, the one we observe and the one that transforms us.

He liked to wake up at 4 a.m. and imagine her then.  It was the time when he could catch hold of her.  At 4 a.m. people are doing nothing; they are sleeping.

Medicine and religion: two functions that seem compatible.  But today, when all is clear, one realizes that they are irreconcilable, and that one must choose between the relative and the absolute.  "If I believed in God, I should not treat mankind.  If I had an idea that mankind could be cured, I should not belive in God."

I took ten years to win what seems to me priceless: a heart without bitterness.  And as often happens, once I had gone beyond the bitterness, I incorporated it in one or two books.  Thus I shall be forever judged on that bitterness which has ceased to mean anything to me.  But that is just.  It's the price one must pay.

What is love for her? -- that void, that little hollow in her since they discovered each other, that call of lovers toward each other, shouting each other's name.

Separated, they write each other and he strikes the right note and keeps her love.  Triumph of words and of style.

Christianity.  You would certainly be punished if we accepted your postulates.  For then your condemnation would be merciless.

Bad reputations are easier to bear than good ones, for the good ones are heavy to drag along; one has to prove oneself always up to it and any lapse is looked upon as a crime.  With bad reputations, a lapse is to your credit.

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