Albert Camus

1913 - 1960

Albert Camus was a French philosopher, author, and journalist known for his existentialist works, including "The Stranger" and "The Myth of Sisyphus." He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957 for his contribution to literature, providing insight into the human condition and the search for meaning in an indifferent world.

Don’t wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.

The Fall, p. 147, 1956

Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.

Don’t walk in front of me… I may not followDon’t walk behind me… I may not leadWalk beside me… just be my friend

Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.

Alas, after a certain age every man is responsible for his face.

When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it.

The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.

The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942

The literal meaning of life is whatever you're doing that prevents you from killing yourself.

Life is a sum of all your choices. So, what are you doing today?

Sometimes, carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement.

The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942

It requires less mental effort to condemn than to think.

Lyrical and Critical Essays, p. 224, 1968

The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a human heart. One must imagine that Sisyphus is happy.

The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942

Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.

The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942

I was looked at, but I wasn't seen.

The Misunderstanding

The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning.

It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.

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.

Integrity has no need of rules.

A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.

To know oneself, one should assert oneself.

The Notebooks, 1935-1942, p. 206

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 Rebel, p. 6, 1951

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.

Quote Investigator indicates the quote was said by Bernard Malamud in an interview in 1958. Camus previously said something similar about his own generation in his 1957 Nobel Banquet speech

In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

Return to Tipasa," Lyrical and Critical Essays, 1968

An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched.

Lyrical and Critical Essays, p. 347, 1968

Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.

Carnets: janvier 1942 – mars 1951 (Notebooks: January 1942 – March 1951) by Albert Camus, Cahier IV (Notebook 4), page 105, 1964

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

The Plague, 1947

After awhile you could get used to anything.

Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?

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

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

An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.

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

Return to Tipasa," Lyrical and Critical Essays, 1967

I don't want to be a genius. I have enough problems just trying to be a man.

Always go too far, because that's where you'll find the truth.

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

The Fall, 1956

Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.

The Rebel," p. 298, 1951

When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune.

The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942

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

The Rebel, p. 302, 1951

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

The Rebel, p. 303, 1951