Every stone here sweats with suffering, I know that. I have never looked at them without a feeling of anguish. But deep in my heart I know that the most wretched among you have seen a divine face emerge from their darkness. That is the face you are asked to see.
Interpretation
The quote speaks to the suffering inherent in life while also highlighting the potential for finding beauty or divinity in darkness.
Albert Camus reflects on the constant presence of suffering in the world, suggesting that every hardship carries an emotional weight. However, he also emphasizes that within this suffering, there is the possibility of recognizing a divine or beautiful aspect, urging us to look beyond despair and find hope or enlightenment even in the direst situations.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about resilience in the face of adversity.
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.
The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.
I have always given it as my decided opinion that no nation had a right to intermeddle in the internal concerns of another; that every one had a right to form and adopt whatever government they liked best to live under themselves.
Prayer is the vital breath of the Christian; not the thing that makes him alive, but the evidence that he is alive.
So lonely 'twas that God himself Scarce seemed there to be.
Where there is no style, there is no slave. Martial Arts mean honestly expressing yourself. No style. No slave.
There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words. To this chiefly it is owing that we find sects and parties in most branches of science [and politics]; and disputes that are carried on from age to age, without being brought to issue.
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