Some cry: 'Love me!!' Others: 'Don't love me!!' But a certain genus, the worst and most unhappy, cries: 'Don't love me and be faithful to me!!'
Interpretation
The quote examines the complexities of love and the conflicting desires people have within relationships.
In this quote, Albert Camus highlights the paradoxical nature of human emotions in love. While some people openly seek love and affection, others may push it away, yet the most troubled individuals are those who desire love but simultaneously crave the loyalty of someone who does not reciprocate. This reflects a deeper existential conflict about the nature of relationships and the human condition.
In practice
During a talk about the complexities of relationships, this quote can illustrate conflicting feelings in 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.
Love is a time-honored way to transcend the separate-self sense and leap into the sublime; Treya and I held hands, closed our eyes, and jumped.
Love, love, love β all the wretched cant of it, masking egotism, lust, masochism, fantasy under a mythology of sentimental postures, a welter of self-induced miseries and joys, blinding and masking the essential personalities in the frozen gestures of courtship, in the kissing and the dating and the desire, the compliments and the quarrels which vivify its barrenness.
Oh, hasten not this loving act, Rapture where self and not-self meet: My life has been the awaiting you, Your footfall was my own heart's beat.
Six foot six he stood on the ground He weighed two hundred and thirty-five pounds But I saw that giant of a man brought down To his knees by love
Let us also love our neighbors as ourselves. Let us have charity and humility. Let us give alms because these cleanse our souls from the stains of sin. Men lose all the material things they leave behind them in this world, but they carry with them the reward of their charity and the alms they give. For these they will receive from the Lord the reward and recompense they deserve.
Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it and it darts away.
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