Albert Camus Quotes

499 Sourced Quotes

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.

Albert Camus
By giving too much importance to fine actions one may end by paying an indirect but powerful tribute to evil, because in so doing one implies that such fine actions are only valuable because they are rare, and that malice or indifference are far more common motives in the actions of men.

Albert Camus
Thus, in a middle course between these heights and depths, they drifted through life rather than lived, the prey of aimless days and sterile memories, like wandering shadows that could have acquired substance only by consenting to root themselves in the solid earth of their distress.

Albert Camus
In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.

Albert Camus
Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

Albert Camus
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
Nothing is harder to understand than a symbolic work. A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing.

Albert Camus
For those of us who have been thrown into hell, mysterious melodies and the torturing images of a vanished beauty will always bring us, in the midst of crime and folly, the echo of that harmonious insurrection which bears witness, throughout the centuries, to the greatness of humanity.

Albert Camus
What I know most surely about morality and the duty of man I owe to sport.

Albert Camus
We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking.

Albert Camus
Politics and the fate of mankind are formed by men without ideals and without greatness. Those who have greatness within them do not go in for politics.

Albert Camus
I'll tell you a big secret, mon cher. Don't wait for the last judgement. It takes place every day.

Albert Camus
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.

Albert Camus
One plays at being immortal and after a few weeks one doesn't even know whether or not one can hang on till the next day.

Albert Camus
Only the sea, murmurous behind the dingy checkerboard of houses, told of the unrest, the precariousness, of all things in this world.

Albert Camus
The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness.

Albert Camus
What we learn in a time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise.

Albert Camus
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.

Albert Camus
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.

Albert Camus
In the vast reaches of the dry, cold night, thousands of stars were constantly appearing, and their sparkling icicles, loosened at once, began to slip gradually toward the horizon.

Albert Camus
The struggle to reach the top is itself enough to fulfill the heart of man. One must believe that Sisyphus is happy.

Albert Camus
No, Father, I've a very different idea of love. And until my dying day I shall refuse to love a scheme of things in which children are put to torture.

Albert Camus
What is a rebel? A man who says no: but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation.

Albert Camus
It is not rebellion itself which is noble but the demands it makes upon us.

Albert Camus
But do you know why we are always more just and generous toward the dead? The reason is simple. With them there is no obligation. They leave us free and we can take our time, fit the testimonial between a cocktail party and a nice little mistress, in our spare time, in short.

Albert Camus
A man wants to earn money in order to be happy, and his whole effort and the best of a life are devoted to the earning of that money. Happiness is forgotten; the means are taken for the end.

Albert Camus
It is a well-known fact that we always recognize our homeland when we are about to lose it.

Albert Camus
Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely.

Albert Camus
…there's no question of heroism in all this. It's a matter of common decency. That's an idea which may make some people smile, but the only means of fighting a plague is - common decency.

Albert Camus
Artistic creation is a demand for unity and a rejection of the world.

Albert Camus