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Albert Camus

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Famous Albert Camus Quotes

“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.”

PhilosophyExistentialismAlbert CamusThe Fall
Author:Albert Camus
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“To work and create “for nothing,” to sculpture in clay, to know that one’s creation has no future, to see one’s work destroyed in a day while being aware that fundamentally this has no more importance than building for centuries—this is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions. Performing these two tasks simultaneously, negating on the one hand and magnifying on the other, is the way open to the absurd creator. He must give the void its colors.”

ArtExistentialismAbsurdism
Book:The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
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“Sometimes at midnight, in the great silence of the sleep-bound town, the doctor turned on his radio before going to bed for the few hours’ sleep he allowed himself. And from the ends of the earth, across the thousands of miles of land and sea, kindly, well-meaning speakers tried to voice their fellow-feeling, and indeed did so, but at the same time proved the utter incapacity of every man truly to share in suffering that he cannot see.”

EmpathyExistentialismAlbert CamusThe Plague
Book:The Plague
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“I didn't know that freedom is not a reward or a decoration that is celebrated with champagne. Nor yet a gift, a box of dainties to make you lick your chops. Oh, no! It's a chore, on the contrary, and a long-distance race, quite solitary and very exhausting. No champagne, no friends raising their glasses as they look at you affectionately. Alone in a forbidding room, alone in the prisoner's box before the judges, and alone to decide in the face of oneself or in the face of others' judgement. At the end of all freedom is a court sentence; that's why freedom is too heavy to bear, especially when you're down with a fever, or are distressed, or love nobody.”

FreedomExistenceMindsetExistentialismSisyphus
Book:The fall
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“And, on a wide view, I could see that it makes little difference whether one dies at the age of thirty or threescore and ten—since, in either case, other men and women will continue living, the world will go on as before. Also, whether I died now or forty years hence, this business of dying had to be got through, inevitably. Still, somehow this line of thought wasn't as consoling as it should have been; the idea of all those years of life in hand was a galling reminder!”

DeathExistentialism
Book:The Stranger
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“Then you'll see that debauchery is liberating because it creates no obligations. In it you possess only yourself; hence it remains the favorite pastime of the great lovers of their own person. It is a jungle without past or future, without any promise of above all, nor any immediate penalty. The places where it is practiced are separated from the world. On entering, one leaves behind fear and hope. Conversation is not obligatory there; what one comes for can be had without words, and often indeed without money. Ah, I beg you, let me pay honor to the unknown and forgotten women who helped me then! Even today, my recollection of them contains something resembling respect.”

ExistentialismDebauchery
Book:The fall
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“Suddenly, far off at sea, I perceived a black speck on the steel-gray ocean. I turned at once and my heart began to beat wildly. When I forced myself to look, the black speck had disappeared. I was on the point of shouting, of stupidly calling for help, when I saw it again. It was one of those bits of refuse that ships leave behind them. Yet I had not been able to endure watching it; for I had thought at once of a drowning person. Then I realized, as calmly as you resign yourself to the idea the truth of which you have long known, that that cry which had sounded over the Seine behind me years before had never ceased, carried by the river to the waters of the Channel, to travel throughout the world, across the limitless expanse of the ocean, and that it had waited for me there until the day I had encountered it. I realized likewise that it would continue to await me on seas and rivers, everywhere, in short where lies the bitter water of my baptism. Here, too, by the way, aren't we on the water? On this flat, monotonous, interminable water whose limits are indistinguishable from those of the land? Is it credible that we shall ever reach Amsterdam? We shall never get out of this immense holy-water font. Listen. Don't you hear the cries of invisible gulls? If they are crying in our direction, to what are they calling us? But they are the same gulls that were crying, that were already calling over the Atlantic the day I realized definitively that I was not cured, that I was still cornered and that I had to make shift with it. Ended the glorious life, but ended also the frenzy and the convulsions. I had to submit and admit my guilt. I had to live in the little-ease.”

HealingRealizationExistentialismAha Moment
Book:The fall
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“I was tempted by the Resistance, about which people were beginning to talk just about the time I discovered that I was patriotic. You are smiling? You are wrong. I made my discoery on a subway platofmr at the Chatelet station. A dog had strayed into the labryinth of passageways. Big, wiry-haired, one ear cocked, eyes laughing, he was cavorting and sniffing the passing legs. I have a very old and very faithful attachment for dogs. I like them because they always forgive. I called this one, who hesitated, obviously won over, waggting his tail enthusiastically for a few yards ahead of me. Just then, a young German soldier, who was walking briskly, passed me. Having reached the dog, he caressed the shaggy head. Without hesitating, the animal fell in step with the same enthusiasm and disappared with him. From the resentment and the sort of rage I felt against the German soldier, it was clear to me that my reaction was patriotic. If the dog had followed a French civilian, I'd not even have thought of it. But, on the contrary, I imagined that friendly dog as the mascot of a German regiment and that made me fly into a rage. Hence the test was convincing.”

ExistentialismPatriotismWorld War IiRecruitment
Book:The fall
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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.”

IfsLifeInspirationalHappinessLife IsPurposeSpiritualityExistenceInspirational LifePhilosophicalHappyUnhappyThis LifeLive LifeMeaning Of LifeExistentialismUnhappinessHappy LifeBeing HappyVery HappyBad AssSoul SearchingDiscontentMeaningful LifeFinding HappinessGreat HappinessLife HappinessJust LiveJoy And HappinessMeaning LifeLife MeansI Live My LifeJust Be HappyJoy HappinessTrue MeaningLife And HappinessHappiness And SuccessWhat Is LifeSelf HappinessLive Life HappySecret To HappinessLife Well LivedWhat Is HappinessSisyphusTruly HappyLooking For HappinessSearching For HappinessLiving Life WellMake Others HappyWhat Is The Meaning Of LifeLive Life Happy InspirationalLive HappyBeing Happy With LifeSuccess HappinessWhat Is The MeaningMetaphors Of LifePhases Of LifeSpiritual HappinessTrue Meaning Of LifeWhat Is The Purpose Of LifeLive Your Life HappyHappy Love Life
Author:Albert Camus
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“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”

InspirationalFallNatureNaturalTreeFlowerSpringGardenSeasonsExistentialismAutumnSeptemberEncouragingLeafsSecond ChanceOctoberFloweringInspirational NatureFall AutumnFall SeasonSpring PoemsSpiritual NatureSpring FlowersEarth And SkyAutumn LeavesAutumn SeasonBeautiful FlowerFlowers And GardensAutumn DaysBeauty Of The EarthBeing NaturalSpring InspirationalWinter To SpringNature And ArtOctober And FallWelcome SpringSpring GardenEquinoxNovember PoemsInspirational FlowerAutumn InspirationalPlants And FlowersAutumn LoveSpring GardeningSummer To FallLove And FlowerFall And WinterAutumn EquinoxGood SpringAutumnal EquinoxAutumn And WinterFallen Trees
Book:Caligula and Three Other Plays
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“Slave camps under the flag of freedom, massacres justified by philanthropy or the taste of the superhuman, cripple judgment. On the day when crime puts on the apparel of innocence, through a curious reversal peculiar to our age, it is innocence that is called on to justify itself. The purpose of this essay is to accept and study that strange challenge.”

AgePurposeChallengesAcceptingStudyCrimeStrangeTasteJudgmentSlaveCuriousInnocenceExistentialismJustifyCampsPeculiarFlagsPhilanthropyEssaysJustifiedMassacresSuperhumanCripplesApparelReversal
Book:Caligula and Cross purpose
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