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.
Interpretation
True love is rare and seldom encountered, with most relationships lacking depth.
In this quote, Albert Camus reflects on the rarity of true love, suggesting that it occurs only a few times in a century. He posits that much of what we perceive as love is actually driven by superficial desires such as vanity or is simply a routine that leads to boredom, contrasting the extraordinary nature of genuine emotional connections.
In practice
Use this quote during a romantic dinner to provoke deep conversation about the nature of love.
The Poor Man whom everyone speaks of, the Poor Man whom everyone pities, one of the repulsive Poor from whom charitable souls keep their distance, he has still said nothing. Or, rather, he has spoken through the voice of Victor Hugo, Zola, Richepin. At least, they said so. And these shameful impostures fed their authors. Cruel irony, the Poor Man tormented with hunger feeds those who plead his case.
The certainty of a God giving meaning to life far surpasses in attractiveness the ability to behave badly with impunity. The choice would not be hard to make. But there is no choice and that is where the bitterness comes in. The absurd does not liberate; it binds.
Between history and the eternal I have chosen history because I like certainties. Of it, at least, I am certain, and how can I deny this force crushing me.
Don't wait for the last judgment - it takes place every day.
A single sentence will suffice for modern man. He fornicated and read the papers. After that vigorous definition, the subject will be, if I may say so, exhausted.
At times I feel myself overtaken by an immense tenderness for these people around me who live in the same century.
Whatever you love most, you fear you might lose, you know it can change. Why do you look from left to right when you cross the street? Because you donβt want to get run over. But, you still cross the street.
Judgement is the forbidden objectivization of the other person which destroys single-minded love. I am not forbidden to have my own thoughts about the other person, to realize his shortcomings, but only to the extent that it offers to me an occasion for forgiveness and unconditional love, as Jesus proves to me.
I missed her then but it was an odd sort of missing because by then, I knew the meaning of forever.
And he absolutely had to find her at once to tell her that he adored her, but the large audience before him separated him from the door, and the notes reaching him through a succession of hands said that she was not available; that she was inaugurating a fire; that she had married an american businessman; that she had become a character in a novel; that she was dead.
But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.
All she wanted was to be a little girl, to be efficiently taken care of by some yielding yet superior power, stupider and steadier than herself. It seemed that the only lover she had ever wanted was a lover in a dream
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