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...

An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. “Can they be brought...

And, on a wide view, I could see that it makes little difference whether one dies at the age of thirty or threescore and ten—since, in either case, other men and women will continue living,...

But what are a hundred million deaths? When one has served in a war, one hardly knows what a dead man is, after a while. And since a dead man has no substance unless one...

He was one of those rare people, rare in our town as elsewhere, who have the courage of their good feelings. What little he told of his personal life vouched for acts of kindness and...

Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death. So long as you are alive, your case is doubtful; you have a right only...

You see, I’ve heard of a man whose friend had been imprisoned and who slept on the floor of his room every night in order not to enjoy a comfort of which his friend had...

It is a matter of living in that state of the absurd I know on what it is founded, this mind and this world straining against each other without being able to embrace each other....

You see, Mersualt, all the misery and cruelty of our civilisation can be measured by this one stupid axiom: happy nations have no history.

Nous sommes devenus lucides. Nous avons remplacé le dialogue par le communiqué.

One plays at being immortal and after a few weeks one doesn’t even know whether or not one can hang on till the next day.

I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L’Illustration. Something desperate, you know.

There is but one true philosophical problem and that is suicide.

Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it.

There is something divine in mindless beauty.

Créer, c’est vivre deux fois.

Fate is not in man but around him

In short, whoever does violence to truth or its expression eventually mutilates justice, even though he thinks he is serving it. From this point of view, we shall deny to the very end that a...

In the age of ideologies, we must make up our minds about murder. If murder has rational foundations, then our period and we ourselves have significance. If it has no such foundations, then we are...

An animated conversation was in progress and the woman behind the counter started airing her views about a murder case that had created some stir in Algiers. A young commercial employee had killed an Algerian...

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

All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant’s revolving door.

For who would dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for a single moment’s human suffering

որևէ քաղաք ճանաչելու ամենաճիշտ ձևերից մեկն էլ իմանալն է, թե ինչպե՞ս են այնտեղ աշխատում, ինչպե՞ս են սիրում, և ինչպե՞ս են մեռնում:

I simply took refuge among women. As you know, they don’t really condemn any weakness; they would be more inclined to try to humiliate or disarm our strength. This is why woman is the reward,...

I felt as though I was partly unlearning what i had never learned and yet knew so well: I mean, how to live.

I explained to him, however, that my nature was such that my physical needs often got in the way of my feelings.

But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.

Why, because an author has more rights than ordinary people, as everybody knows. People will stand much more from him.

But above all, in order to be, never try to seem.

Existence is illusory and it is eternal.

Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep

Qu’est-ce que le roman, en effet, sinon cet univers où l’action trouve sa forme, où les mots de la fin sont prononcés, les êtres livrés aux êtres, où toute vie prend le visage du destin....

To be born to create, to love, to win at games is to be born to live in time of peace. But war teaches us to lose everything and become what we were not. It...

Don’t you think our society is designed to kill in that way? Of course, you’ve surely heard about those tiny fish in the rivers of Brazil which attack the swimmer by the thousands, eat him...

Who taught you all this, doctor?”The reply came promptly:”Suffering.

A partir do momento em que é reconhecido, o absurdo é uma paixão, a mais dilacerante de todas.

The evil that is in the world comes out of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. One the whole, men are more good than bad; that,...

The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits.

l’homme se trouve devant l’irrationnel. Il sent en lui son désir de bonheur et de raison. L’absurde naît de cette confrontation entre l’appel humain et le silence déraisonnable du monde.

You know very well that I no longer think. I am far too intelligent for that.

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

Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined. Society has but little connection with such beginnings. The worm is in man’s heart. That is where it must be sought. One must follow and understand this...

A man devoid of hope and conscious of being so has ceased to belong to the future.

Ahimè, dopo una certa età ognuno è responsabile della sua faccia.

It is better for the intellectual not to talk all the time. To begin with, it would exhaust him, and, above all, it would keep him from thinking. He must create if he can, first...

At the beginning of a pestilence and when it ends, there’s always a propensity for rhetoric. In the first case, habits have not yet been lost; in the second, they’re returning. It is in the...

I couldn’t quite understand how an ordinary man’s good qualities could become crushing accusations against a guilty man.

Of whom and of what can I say: “I know that”! This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it...