Quotes By Albert Camus

What the world requires of the Christians is that they should continue to be Christians.

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

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

A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

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

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

For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium.

To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

The desire for possession is insatiable, to such a point that it can survive even love itself. To love, therefore, is to sterilize the person one loves.

You have to be very rich or very poor to live without a trade.

To know oneself, one should assert oneself.

Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.

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

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

Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.

Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.

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

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

In order to exist just once in the world, it is necessary never again to exist.

To be happy we must not be too concerned with others.

Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.

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.