“He marveled at the strange blindness by which men, though they are so alert to what changes in themselves, impose on their friends an image chosen for them once and for all. He was being judged by what he had been. Just as dogs don't change character, men are dogs to one another.”

—  Albert Camus, book A Happy Death

A Happy Death (1971)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "He marveled at the strange blindness by which men, though they are so alert to what changes in themselves, impose on th…" by Albert Camus?
Albert Camus photo
Albert Camus209
French author and journalist 1913–1960

Related quotes

Cesare Pavese photo

“He told them it was only dogs that bark and go for strange dogs, and men set on a dog because it suits them to show that they are still masters, but if the dogs weren't dumb animals they would come to an agreements with each other and start barking at them.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

Source: The moon and the bonfire (1950), Chapter XVIII, p. 107

John Bartholomew Gough photo

“A man is what he is, not what men say he is. His character no man can touch. His character is what he is before his God and his Judge; and only himself can damage that. His reputation is what men say he is. That can be damaged; but reputation is for time, character is for eternity.”

John Bartholomew Gough (1817–1886) Anglo-American temperance orator

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 46.

“The dog had no name. For a dog to have a name someone must have him and someone must love him, and a dog must have someone. The dog had no one, and no one had the dog. The dog had only the silent empty countryside of the few houses. The dog had only the crumbs and cleaned bones he could pick up at the few houses. The dog had only himself, so the dog had nothing, and he was afraid.”

Meindert DeJong book Hurry Home

Hurry Home, Candy (1953)

Confucius photo

“The superior man governs men, according to their nature, with what is proper to them, and as soon as they change what is wrong, he stops.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

Ursula K. Le Guin photo

“Men call women faithless, changeable, and though they say it in jealousy of their own ever-threatened sexual honor, there is some truth in it. We can change our life, our being; no matter what our will is, we are changed. As the moon changes yet is one, so we are virgin, wife, mother, grandmother. For all their restlessness, men are who they are; once they put on the man's toga they will not change again; so they make a virtue of that rigidity and resist whatever might soften it and set them free.”

Ursula K. Le Guin book Lavinia

Source: Lavinia (2008), p. 184

Halldór Laxness photo

“Once upon a time these two men had been in the same situation; now the difference between them was like the difference between a wish and its fulfillment. The one was what the other had dreamed of, and therefore they did not know one another anymore. He who has wishes yearns for a friend; but when the wishes have been fulfilled, the friends are the first thing we forget.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Four: The Beauty of the Heavens

Henry Fielding photo

“Lo, when two dogs are fighting in the streets,
With a third dog one of the two dogs meets;
With angry teeth he bites him to the bone,
And this dog smarts for what that dog has done.”

Henry Fielding (1707–1754) English novelist and dramatist

Act I, sc. vi
Tom Thumb the Great (1730)

Virgil photo

“How changed from what he once was!”
Quantum mutatus ab illo.

Virgil book Aeneid

Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book II, Line 274

W. Somerset Maugham photo

“Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind.”

W. Somerset Maugham book Of Human Bondage

Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 39

“The nature of a Divine Being is seen more clearly in deeds which are loving than in deeds which are marvelous. He does not need miracle to make us love him or to prove that he is more than man. The unanswerable argument for his religion is that wherever he is sincerely followed men’s lives are changed.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.112

Related topics