Albert Camus

Thus, in a middle course between these heights and depths, they drifted through life rather than lived, the prey of aimless days and sterile memories, like wandering shadows that could have acquired substance only by consenting to root themselves in the solid earth of their distress.

Yes, I'm happy, in human terms.

Finally, and most of all, words failed him.

But,' I reminded myself, 'it's common knowledge that life isn't worth living, anyhow.

My life was lucky so that I met, I loved (and disappointed) only outstanding people.

What on earth prompted you to take a hand in this?" "I don't know. My… my code of morals, perhaps." "Your code of morals. What code, if I may ask?" "Comprehension.

Of course, true love is exceptional - two or three times a century, more or less. The rest of the time there is vanity or boredom.

But do you know why we are always more just and generous toward the dead? The reason is simple. With them there is no obligation. They leave us free and we can take our time, fit the testimonial between a cocktail party and a nice little mistress, in our spare time, in short.

That's the way man is, cher monsieur. He has two faces: he can't love without self-love.

There is a life and there is a death, and there are beauty and melancholy between.

For ever, I shall be a stranger to myself.

There are people who vindicate the world, who help others live just by their presence.

You know very well that I no longer think. I am far too intelligent for that.

One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

If we believe in nothing, if nothing has any meaning and if we can affirm no values whatsoever, then everything is possible and nothing has any importance.

At a certain level of suffering or injustice no one can do anything for anyone. Pain is solitary.

And never have I felt so deeply at one and the same time so detached from myself and so present in the world.

Human rebellion ends in metaphysical revolution. It progresses from appearances to acts, from the dandy to the revolutionary.

The spirit of rebellion can only exist in a society where a theoretical equality conceals great factual inequalities. The problem of rebellion, therefore, has no meaning except within our own Western society.

A stranger to myself and to the world, armed solely with a thought that negates itself as soon as it asserts, what is this condition in which I can have peace only by refusing to know and to live, in which the appetite for conquest bumps into walls that defy its assaults?

In the past, the poverty they shared had a certain sweetness about it. When the end of the day came and they would eat their dinner in silence with the oil lamp between them, there was a secret joy in such simplicity, such retrenchment.