In the long run one gets used to anything.

Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery...

It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the...

It seems that the people of Oran are like that friend of Flaubert who, on the point of death, casting a last glance at the irreplaceable earth, exclaimed: “Close the window, it’s too beautiful.

[…] Everyone tries to make his life a work of art. We want love to last and we know that it does not last; even if, by some miracle, it were to last a whole...

There are crimes of passion and crimes of logic. The boundary between them is not clearly defined.

It is not humiliating to be unhappy. Physical suffering is sometimes humiliating, but the suffering of being cannot be, it is life.

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. ButSisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He tooconcludes that all is well. This universe...

But as soon as a man, through lack of character, takes refuge in doctrine, as soon as crime reasons about itself, it multiplies like reason itself and assumes all the aspects of the syllogism. Once...

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

February 13, 1936I ask of people more than they can give me. It is useless to maintain the contrary. But what a mistake and what despair. And myself perhaps…Seek contacts. All contacts. If I want...

I have no idea what’s awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing.

I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I cannot know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it.

In order to be created, a work of art must first make use of the dark forces of the soul

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.

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,...

I hope the dogs don’t bark tonight. I always think it’s mine

… I suppose that it is not so easy to go home and it takes a bit of time to make a son out of a stranger.

Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him?

Lo que es preciso subrayar es el aspecto frívolo de la población y de la vida. Pero se pasan los días fácilmente en cuanto se adquieren hábitos, y puesto que nuestra ciudad favorece justamente los...

Aujourd’hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas. J’ai reçu un télégramme de l’asile : « Mère décédée. Enterrement demain. Sentiments distingués. » Cela ne veut rien dire. C’était peut-être hier.

Lying is not only saying what isn’t true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true, and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels.

You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.

She was waiting, but she didn’t know for what. She was aware only of her solitude, and of the penetrating cold, and of a greater weight in the region of her heart.

He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.

Vivre, naturellement, n’est jamais facile. On continue à faire les gestes que l’existence commande, pour beaucoup de raisons dont la première est l’habitude. Mourir volontairement suppose qu’on a reconnu, même instinctivement, le caractère dérisoire de...

Thinking is learning all over again how to see, directing one’s consciousness, making of every image a privileged place.

Ah ! cher ami, que les hommes sont pauvres en invention. Ils croient toujours qu’on se suicide pour une raison. Mais on peut très bien se suicider pour deux raisons. Non, ça ne leur entre...

… We need the sweet pain of anticipation to tell us we are really alive.

The only picture of Tarrou he would always have would be the picture of a man who firmly gripped the steering-wheel of his car when driving, or else the picture of that stalwart body, now...

We are living in the era of premeditation and the perfect crime. Our criminals are no longer helpless children who could plead love as their excuse. On the contrary, they are adults and the have...

If there were a party of those who aren’t sure they’re right, I’d belong to it. ~(Camus, as quoted by Tony Judt)

I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist.

A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.

I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn’t mine anymore, but one in which I’d found the simplest and most lasting joys: the smells of summer, the part of town I loved, a...

cogito” nell’ordine del pensiero: è la prima evidenza. Ma questa evidenza trae l’individuo dalla sua solitudine. È un luogo comune che fonda su tutti gli uomini il proprio valore. Mi rivolto, dunque siamo.

O absurdo é essencialmente um divórcio. Não está num nem outro dos elementos comparados. Nasce do seu confronto.

What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch, what resists me–that is what I understand. And these two certainties–my appetite for the absolute...

. But itis obvious that absurdism hereby admits that human life is the only necessary good since it is preciselylife that makes this encounter possible and since, without life, the absurdist wager would have no...

Integrity has no need of rules.

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest — whether or...

A novel is never anything but a philosophy expressed in images. And in a good novel the philosophy has disappeared into the images.

As if this great outburst of anger had purged all my ills, killed all my hopes, I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for...

One of the only coherent philosophical positions is thus revolt. It is a constant confrontation between man and his own obscurity.

If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.

I have to admit it humbly, mon cher compatriote, I was always bursting with vanity. I, I, I is the refrain of my whole life, which could be heard in everything I said. I could...

He knew now that it was his own will to happiness which must make the next move. But if he was to do so, he realized that he must come to terms with time, that...

Pregunta: ,qué hacer para no perder el tiempo?Respuesta: sentirlo en toda su lentitud. Medios: pasarse los días en la antesala de un dentista en una silla inconfortable; vivir el domingo en el balcón, por la...

There comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. The schoolteacher is well aware of this. And the question is not...

Some, often without knowing it, suffered from being deprived of the company of friends and from their inability to get in touch with them through the usual channels of friendship, letters, trains, and boats. Others,...