Camus Quotations

run by @boomvagynamite

[camusquotes]

“Although in daylight the flights of birds always seem aimless, in the evening they always seem to have found a destination. They are flying towards something.”

— Notebook IV (c. June 1943)

[camusquotes]

The first thing is not to despair.  Let us not listen too much to those who proclaim that the world is at an end.  Civilizations do not die so easily, and even if our world were to collapse, it would not have been the first.  It is indeed true that we live in tragic times.  But too many people confuse tragedy with despair.

- Albert Camus, The Almond Trees

[camusquotes]

“Rock-coloured butterflies. The wind whistling through the dell makes a sound like rushing waters. The Sorgue adorned with flowered dragnets.”

— Notebook VI (c. July 1948)

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

I have a silly desire to cry, but that’s the price of life.

Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, December 31, 1948 [#49] (via acknowledgetheabsurd)

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

And I will take you in the middle of the wind, of the driving rain, of the rosettes of the waves in the smell of the kelp, and I will make you understand and love this infinite movement, all wet, salty, where one can only live in the past because the moment is so fleeting and inaccessible.

Maria Casarès to Albert Camus, Correspondance, December 30, 1948 [#47] (via acknowledgetheabsurd)

[camusquotes]

Nostalgia for the life of others. This is because, seen from the outside, another's life forms a unit. Whereas ours, seen from the inside, seems broken up. We are still chasing after an illusion of unity.

Notebook IV (August/September, 1942)

[camusquotes]

At war. People who argue about the amount of danger at each front. 'Mine was the most dangerous.' When everything has been made vile and sordid, they still try to establish an order of merit. That is how they survive.

Notebook II (Spring, 1939)

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

Freedom can be a prison, so long as a single man on earth is kept in bondage.

Albert Camus, The Just Assassins (via acknowledgetheabsurd)

[camusquotes]

The woman who looked as if she had been constipated for three years: 'Oh these Arabs, they still make their girls cover their faces. Oh, they're not civilised yet,' Little by little, she lets us see what her idea of civilisation is: a husband earning 1200 francs a month, a two room apartment, kitchen and bath, the movies every Sunday, and furniture from the Galeries Barbès for weekdays.

Notebook III (March, 1941)

[camusquotes]

There is always a philosophy for lack of courage.

Notebook IV (1942)

[camusquotes]

Understand this: we can despair of the meaning of life in general, but not of the particular forms that it takes; we can despair of existence, for we have no power over it, but not of history, where the individual can do everything. It is individuals who are killing us today. Why should not individuals manage to give the world peace?

Notebook III (November, 1939)

[irisistible]

Rule: Start by looking for what is valid in every man.

Albert Camus, Notebooks 1935-1942 (via irisistible)

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

All I know is that everything I feel or think of turns to love.

Albert Camus, Caligula

[camusquotes]

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.

Summer in Algiers (1955)

[inthe-hollow]

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.

Albert Camus (via inthe-hollow)

[camusquotes]

When I was young, I expected people to give me more than they could - continuous friendship, permanent emotion. Now I have learned to expect less of them than they can give - a silent companionship. And their emotions, their friendship, and noble gestures keep their full miraculous value in my eyes; wholly the fruit of grace.

Notebook I (1935)

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

Our future, our revolution, depend entirely on the present moment, echoing with cries of anger and with the wrath of liberty.

Albert Camus, Camus at Combat (August 23, 1944)