To those who despair of everything reason cannot provide a faith, but only passion, and in this case it must be the same passion that lay at the root of the despair, namely humiliation and hatred.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that when reason fails to offer hope, passion—rooted in negative emotions—can become a driving force for belief.
In this quote, Albert Camus reflects on the nature of despair and the role of passion in shaping one's beliefs. He suggests that when logical reasoning fails to provide the necessary faith or hope, it is often the intense emotions like humiliation and hatred that fuel a person’s convictions. This presents a paradox where the very feelings that cause despair can simultaneously drive a person to adopt a fervent belief, highlighting the complex interplay between emotion and reason in human experience.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the resilience of human spirit in facing 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 ideal of a single civilization for everyone, implicit in the cult of progress and technique, impoverishes and mutilates us
People talk about places like Mumbai as a tale of two cities, as if the rich and poor don't have anything to do with each other.
Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.
For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence.
Sacrifice is truly the crowning test of the gospel. Men are tried and tested in this mortal probation to see if they will put first in their lives the kingdom of God.
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