An intense feeling carries with it its own universe magnificent or wretched as the case may be.
~ Albert Camus
At thirty a man should know himself like the palm of his hand know the exact number of his defects and qualities. ... And above all accept these things.
To know oneself one should assert oneself.
If after all men cannot always make history have a meaning they can always act so that their own lives have one.
As a remedy to life in society I would suggest the big city. Nowadays it is the only desert within our reach.
To write is to become disinterested. There is a certain renunciation in art.
In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limits that it discovers in itself - limits where minds meet, and in meeting, begin to exist.
Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.
Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.
We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives... inside ourselves.
Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.
To be famous, in fact, one has only to kill one's landlady.
Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.
Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature.
After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.
I am not made for politics because I am incapable of wanting or accepting the death of the adversary.
For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium.
In order to speak about all and to all, one has to speak of what all know and of the reality common to us all. The sea, rains, necessity, desire, the struggle against death... these are things that unite us all.
Alas, after a certain age every man is responsible for his face.
But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?
Heroism is accessible. Happiness is more difficult.
Your successes and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them.
An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.
The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism.
The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.
I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live as if there isn't and to die to find out that there is.
I was born poor and without religion, under a happy sky, feeling harmony, not hostility, in nature. I began not by feeling torn, but in plenitude.
Conscious of not being able to separate myself from my time, I have decided to become part of it.
The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.
To correct a natural indifference I was placed half-way between misery and the sun. Misery kept me from believing that all was well under the sun, and the sun taught me that history wasn't everything.
Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.
We turn toward God only to obtain the impossible.
You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.
When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it.
How can sincerity be a condition of friendship? A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.
Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.
Truth is mysterious, elusive, always to be conquered. Liberty is dangerous, as hard to live with as it is elating. We must march toward these two goals, painfully but resolutely, certain in advance of our failings on so long a road.
