Albert Camus: Man

“At this point of his effort man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), An Absurd Reasoning
Context: At this point of his effort man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world. This must not be forgotten. This must be clung to because the whole consequence of a life can depend on it. The irrational, the human nostalgia, and the absurd that is born of their encounter — these are the three characters in the drama that must necessarily end with all the logic of which an existence is capable.

World , Feeling , Effort , Silence

“Man cannot do without beauty, and this is what our era pretends to want to disregard.”

Albert Camus

"Helen's Exile" (1948)
Context: Man cannot do without beauty, and this is what our era pretends to want to disregard. It steels itself to attain the absolute and authority; it wants to transfigure the world before having exhausted it, to set it to rights before having understood it. Whatever it may say, our era is deserting this world.

Beauty

“In that daily effort in which intelligence and passion mingle and delight each other, the absurd man discovers a discipline that will make up the greatest of his strengths.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), Absurd Creation
Context: In that daily effort in which intelligence and passion mingle and delight each other, the absurd man discovers a discipline that will make up the greatest of his strengths. The required diligence and doggedness and lucidity thus resemble the conqueror's attitude. To create is likewise to give a shape to one's fate. For all these characters, their work defines them at least as much as it is defined by them. The actor taught us this: There is no frontier between being and appearing.

Intelligence , Effort , Passion

“At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), An Absurd Reasoning, p. 155

Feeling

“This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), An Absurd Reasoning
Context: What, then, is that incalculable feeling that deprives the mind of the sleep necessary to life? A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. <!-- 153

Life , Feeling

“The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

Original French: La lutte elle-même vers les sommets suffit à remplir un cœur d'homme; il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux.
Variant translation: The fight itself towards the summits suffices to fill a heart of man; it is necessary to imagine Sisyphus happy.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), The Myth of Sisyphus
Context: I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

Imagination , Heart , Happiness

“When the imagination sleeps, words are emptied of their meaning: a deaf population absent-mindedly registers the condemnation of a man.”

Albert Camus book Reflections on the Guillotine

Reflections on the Guillotine (1957)
Context: When the imagination sleeps, words are emptied of their meaning: a deaf population absent-mindedly registers the condemnation of a man. … there is no other solution but to speak out and show the obscenity hidden under the verbal cloak.

Imagination , Sleep

“A man defines himself by his make-believe as well as by his sincere impulses.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

Un homme se définit aussi bien par ses comédies que par ses élans sincères.
http://books.google.com/books?id=9FgoAQAAIAAJ&q=%22un+homme+se+d%C3%A9finit+aussi+bien+par+ses+com%C3%A9dies+que+par+ses+%C3%A9lans+sinc%C3%A8res%22&pg=PA25#v=onepage
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), An Absurd Reasoning

Sincerity

“Fate is not in man but around him.”

Albert Camus book A Happy Death

A Happy Death (1971)

Fate

“The contradiction is this: man rejects the world as it is, without accepting the necessity of escaping it. In fact, men cling to the world and by far the majority do not want to abandon it.”

Albert Camus book The Rebel

Part 4: Rebellion and Art
The Rebel (1951)

Men , World

“Whatever we may do, excess will always keep its place in the heart of man, in the place where solitude is found. We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others.”

Albert Camus book The Rebel

The Rebel (1951)

World , Solitude , Heart , Fight

“A sub-clerk in the post office is the equal of a conqueror if consciousness is common to them. All experiences are indifferent in this regard. There are some that do either a service or a disservice to man. They do him a service if he is conscious. Otherwise, that has no importance: a man's failures imply judgment, not of circumstances, but of himself.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), The Absurd Man

Failure , Indifference

“The greatest saving one can make in the order of thought is to accept the unintelligibility of the world — and to pay attention to man.”

Albert Camus

Notebooks (1942–1951)

World

“He realized now that to be afraid of this death he was staring at with animal terror meant to be afraid of life. Fear of dying justified a limitless attachment to what is alive in man. And all those who had not made the gestures necessary to live their lives, all those who feared and exalted impotence — they were afraid of death because of the sanction it gave to a life in which they had not been involved. They had not lived enough, never having lived at all.”

Albert Camus book A Happy Death

A Happy Death (1971)

Life , Death , Fear , Animals

“Art, at least, teaches us that man cannot be explained by history alone and that he also finds a reason for his existence in the order of nature.”

Albert Camus book The Rebel

Part 4: Rebellion and Art
The Rebel (1951)

Art , History , Nature

“The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily.”

Albert Camus book Resistance, Rebellion, and Death

"The Artist and His Time"
Resistance, Rebellion, and Death (1960)

Life , World , Art , Freedom

“"I conclude that all is well," says Oedipus, and that remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted. It drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a preference for futile suffering. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), The Myth of Sisyphus

Men , God , Fate , World

“In the end, man is not entirely guilty — he did not start history. Nor is he wholly innocent — he continues it.”

Albert Camus book The Rebel

L'homme enfin n'est pas entièrement coupable — il n'a pas commencé l'histoire — ni tout à fait innocent, puisqu'il la continue.
Part 5: Thought at the Meridian (Section: Moderation and Excess)
The Rebel (1951)

History

“Real fulfillment, for the man who allows absolutely free rein to his desires, and who much dominate everything, lies in hatred.”

Albert Camus book The Rebel

Part 2: Metaphysical Rebellion
The Rebel (1951)

“When the throne of God is overturned, the rebel realizes that it is now his own responsibility to create the justice, order, and unity that he sought in vain within his own condition, and in this way to justify the fall of God. Then begins the desperate effort to create, at the price of crime and murder if necessary, the dominion of man.”

Albert Camus book The Rebel

The Rebel (1951)

God , Justice , Way , Effort