“The desert itself has assumed significance; it has been glutted with poetry. For all the world’s sorrows it is a hallowed spot.”
Source: The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
“But at certain moments the heart wants nothing so much as spots devoid of poetry.”
Source: The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
“It is possible to have less ambition and the same nostalgia.”
Source: The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
“From Amsterdam Descartes writes to the aged Guez de Balzac: “I go out walking every day amid the confusion of a great crowd, with as much freedom and tranquillity as you could do on your garden paths.”
Source: The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
“So much heavy beauty seems to come from another world.”
Source: The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
“If the desert can be defined as a soulless place where the sky alone is king, then Oran is awaiting her prophets.”
Source: The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
“Books are written on Florence or Athens. Those cities have formed so many European minds that they must have a meaning. They have the means of moving to tears or of uplifting. They quiet a certain spiritual hunger whose bread is memory. But can one be moved by a city where nothing attracts the mind, where the very ugliness is anonymous, where the past is reduced to nothing? Emptiness, boredom, an indifferent sky, what are the charms of such places? Doubtless solitude and, perhaps, the human creature.”
Source: The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
“The patience of a true enthusiast is unlimited.”
Source: The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
“For force and violence are solitary gods. They contribute nothing to memory. On the contrary, they distribute their miracles by the handful in the present. They are made for this race without past which celebrates its communions around the prize ring. These are rather difficult rites but ones that simplify everything. Good and evil, winner and loser.”
Source: The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
“They are found on dusty little squares, resigned to rain and sun, they too converted to stone and boredom.”
Source: The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays