Albert Camus: Trending quotes

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Albert Camus: 418 quotes36 likes

“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

This quotation is from Notebook IV in Notebooks: 1942-1951, not Myth of Sisyphus. The quotation appears in none of Camus books you find in bookstores
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), An Absurd Reasoning

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”

Albert Camus

Source: "Intuitions" (October 1932), published in Youthful Writings (1976)

“Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children. And if you don’t help us, who else in the world can help us do this?”

Albert Camus

Said at the Dominican Monastery of Latour-Maubourg (1948); reported in Resistance, Rebellion and Death (translation by Justin O'Brien, 1961), p. 73

“To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.”

Albert Camus book The Fall

The Fall (1956)

“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”

Albert Camus

There is no documented evidence that Camus ever wrote or said this, aside from Barry Schwartz's uncited mention in The Paradox of Choice. It is likely falsely attributed.
Disputed

“Idleness is only fatal to the mediocre.”

Albert Camus book A Happy Death

A Happy Death (1971)

“...there are more things to admire in men than to despise.”

Albert Camus book The Plague

The Plague (1947)

“Only it takes time to be happy. A lot of time. Happiness, too, is a long patience.”

Albert Camus book A Happy Death

Seulement, il faut du temps pour être heureux. Beaucoup de temps. Le bonheur lui aussi est une longue patience.
A Happy Death (1971)

“I proclaim that I believe in nothing and that everything is absurd, but I cannot doubt the validity of my proclamation and I must at least believe in my protest.”

Albert Camus book The Rebel

Source: The Rebel (1951), pp. 8 - 10 as quoted in Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd';(2002) by Avi Sagi, p. 44
Context: The absurd … is an experience to be lived through, a point of departure, the equivalent, in existence of Descartes' methodical doubt. Absurdism, like methodical doubt, has wiped the slate clean. It leaves us in a blind alley. But, like methodical doubt, it can, by returning upon itself, open up a new field of investigation, and in the process of reasoning then pursues the same course. I proclaim that I believe in nothing and that everything is absurd, but I cannot doubt the validity of my proclamation and I must at least believe in my protest. The first and only evidence that is supplied me, within the terms of the absurdist experience, is rebellion … Rebellion is born of the spectacle of irrationality, confronted with an unjust and incomprehensible condition.

“The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding.”

Albert Camus book The Plague

The Plague (1947)
Context: The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness.

“Always go too far, because that's where you'll find the truth.”

Albert Camus

Please read this article for more information: Did Camus ever say “Always go too far, because that&#x27;s where you&#x27;ll find the truth”? | Literature Stack Exchange https://literature.stackexchange.com/q/16662/1015 <br class="br">Misattributed

“O light! This is the cry of all the characters of ancient drama brought face to face with their fate. This last resort was ours, too, and I knew it now. In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.”

Albert Camus

Return to Tipasa (1954)
Variant translation: In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
As translated in Lyrical and Critical Essays (1968), p. 169; also in The Unquiet Vision : Mirrors of Man in Existentialism (1969) by Nathan A. Scott, p. 116