Albert Camus Life Quotations

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.

I know of only one duty, and that is to love.

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.

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.

As a remedy to life in society I would suggest the big city. Nowadays, it is the only desert within our means.

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.

We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love - first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.

The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind.

For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.

Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.

Don't wait for the last judgment - it takes place every day.

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.

A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.

He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.

We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.

It is normal to give away a little of one's life in order not to lose it all.

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

Life is a sum of all your choices.

Accept life, take it as it is? Stupid. The means of doing otherwise? Far from our having to take it, it is life that possesses us and on occasion shuts our mouths.

It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life had to have a meaning to be lived. It now becomes clear on the contrary that it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning

The realization that life is absurd and cannot be an end, but only a beginning. This is a truth nearly all great minds have taken as their starting point. It is not this discovery that is interesting, but theconsequences and rules of action drawn from it.

I have never been able, really, to regret anything in all my life. I have always been far much too absorbed in the present moment or the immediate future to think back.

Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself. We continue to shape our personality all our life. To know oneself, one should assert oneself.

The absurd is a shadow cast over everything we do and even if we try to live life as if it has meaning as if there are reasons for doing things the absurd will linger in the back of our minds as a nagging doubt that perhaps there is no point.

I am alive again, now that I can no longer stand to live.

In fact, other people create for lack of power. I, on the other hand, do not need a work: I live.

Men die and they are not happy.

... it is true that I do not respect [human life] more than I respect my own life. And if it is easy for me to kill, that is because it is difficult for me to die.

The opposite of an idealist is too often a man without love.

My chief occupation, despite appearances, has always been love.

I love life - that’s my real weakness. I love it so much that I am incapable of imagining what is not life.

If something is going to happen to me, I want to be there.

The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits.

Life can be magnificent and overwhelming -- that is the whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would almost be easy to live.

At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman.

There are crimes of passion and crimes of logic. The boundary between them is not clearly defined.

If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.

There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness.

...the habit of despair is worse than despair itself.

Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure.

Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it.

I rebel; therefore I exist.

If absolute truth belongs to anyone in this world, it certainly does not belong to the man or party that claims to possess it.

I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.

I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't.

Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.

When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves.

You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.

I know that man is capable of great deeds. But if he isn't capable of great emotion, well, he leaves me cold.

There are causes worth dying for, but none worth killing for.

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.

) it is the image of this woman, sitting idly be her Algiers window indifferently watching life pass her by. He pities his mother but that is not the same as love. Feeling this detachment, he can begin to understand her unhappiness.

If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life

If there is sin against life, it consists in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

If there is sin against life, it consists... in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.