The voices / 410 fragments

Albert Camus

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01Undated

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.

Albert Camus / quote

02Undated

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

Albert Camus / quote

03Undated

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.

Albert Camus / quote

04Undated

What made me run away was doubtless not so much the fear of settling down, but of settling down permanently in something ugly.

Albert Camus / quote

05Undated

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

Albert Camus / quote

06Undated

Live to the point of tears.

Albert Camus / quote

07Undated

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

Albert Camus / quote

08Undated

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.

Albert Camus / quote

09Undated

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

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10Undated

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.

Albert Camus / quote

11Undated

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.

Albert Camus / quote

12Undated

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.

Albert Camus / quote

13Undated

Thus I progressed on the surface of life, in the realm of words as it were, never in reality. All those books barely read, those friends barely loved, those cities barely visited, those women barely possessed! I went through the gestures out of boredom or absent-mindedness. Then came human beings; they wanted to cling, but there was nothing to cling to, and that was unfortunate--for them. As for me, I forgot. I never remembered anything but myself.

Albert Camus / quote

14Undated

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

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15Undated

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

Albert Camus / quote

16Undated

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

Albert Camus / quote

17Undated

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.

Albert Camus / quote

18Undated

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

Albert Camus / quote

19Undated

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

Albert Camus / quote

20Undated

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

Albert Camus / quote

21Undated

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.

Albert Camus / quote

22Undated

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.

Albert Camus / quote

23Undated

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.

Albert Camus / quote

24Undated

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.

Albert Camus / quote