It is necessary to fall in love... if only to provide an alibi for all the random despair you are going to feel anyway.
Interpretation
Falling in love can serve as a justification for the inevitable sadness we experience in life.
This quote by Albert Camus suggests that the experience of love is essential, even if it is accompanied by pain and despair. The notion is that love can provide meaning and a reason for the emotional struggles we face, transforming the random despair into a more comprehensible part of our human experience.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a discussion on the complexities of love in a psychological seminar.
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.
Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not. Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end. Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm. There is only one serious question. And that is: Who knows how to make love stay? Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.
Absence in love is like water upon fire; a little quickens, but much extinguishes it.
The sun's gone dim, and the moon's gone black. For I loved him, and he didn't love back.
The first act of love is always the giving of attention.
I do not love you-except because I love you; I go from loving to not loving you, from waiting to not waiting for you my heart moves from the cold into the fire.
Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is better than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news, is of all glad things in this world the gladdest thing of all. Amen, and come Lord Jesus.
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