Albert Camus

“The mind, when it reaches its limits, must make a judgment and choose its conclusions. This is where suicide and the reply stand.”

“You are forgiven for your happiness and your successes only if you generously consent to share them.”

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

“Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature.”

“A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.”

“This land on which so many centuries have left their mark is merely an obligatory retreat for you, whereas it has always been our dearest hope. Your too sudden passion is made up of spite and necessity.”

“We turn toward God only to obtain the impossible.”

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

“Just as there is a moment when the artist must stop, when the sculpture must be left as it is, the painting untouched—just as a determination not to know serves the maker more than all the resources of clairvoyance—so there must be a minimum of ignorance in order to perfect a life in happiness. Thosewho lack such a thing must set about acquiring it: unintelligence must be earned.”

“I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.”

“I used to advertise my loyalty and I don't believe there is a single person I loved that I didn't eventually betray.”

“At the beginning of a pestilence and when it ends, there's always a propensity for rhetoric. In the first case, habits have not yet been lost; in the second, they're returning. It is in the thick of a calamity that one gets hardened to the truth - in other words, to silence.”

“Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him?”

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

“And despite the clamors and the violence, we tried to preserve in our hearts the memory of a happy sea, of a remembered hill, the smile of a beloved face.”

“How can sincerity be a condition of friendship? A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.”

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

“To be born to create, to love, to win at games is to be born to live in time of peace. But war teaches us to lose everything and become what we were not. It all becomes a question of style.”

“The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

“Note, besides, that it is no more immoral to directly rob citizens than to slip indirect taxes into the price of goods that they cannot do without.”