Albert Camus Doe Quotations

A nihilist is not one who believes in nothing , but one who does not believe in what exists.

But what does it mean, the plague? It's life, that's all.

The reasoning is classic in its clarity. If God does not exist, Kirilov is god. If God does not exist, Kirilov must kill himself. Kirilov must therefore kill himself to become god. That logic is absurd, but it is what is needed.

As soon as one does not kill oneself, one must keep silent about life.

Can one be a saint if God does not exist? That is the only concrete problem I know of today.

It is better for the intellectual not to talk all the time. To begin with, it would exhaust him, and, above all, it would keep him from thinking. He must create if he can, first and foremost, especially if his creation does not side-step the problems of his time.

Lucifer also has died with God, and from his ashes has arisen a spiteful demon who does not even understand the object of his venture.

I always found misogyny vulgar and stupid, and I found almost all the women I have known to be my betters. However, placing them so high, I used them more often than I served them. How does one make sense of this?

Art does not tolerate reason.

Happiness is generous. It does not subsist on destruction.

What more ghastly image can be called up than that of a man betrayed by his body who, simply because he did not die in time, lives out the comedy while awaiting the end, face to face with that God he does not adore, serving him as he served life, kneeling before a void and arms outstretched toward a heaven without eloquence that he knows to be also without depth?

A true masterpiece does not tell everything.

Beauty, no doubt, does not make revolutions. But a day will come when revolutions will have need of beauty.

The certainty of a God giving meaning to life far surpasses in attractiveness the ability to behave badly with impunity. The choice would not be hard to make. But there is no choice and that is where the bitterness comes in. The absurd does not liberate; it binds.

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