Albert Camus

Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question.

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

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.

Do not wait for the last judgment. It takes place every day.

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. No great work has ever been based on hatred and contempt. On the contrary, there is not a single true work of art that has not in the end added to the inner freedom of each person who has known and loved it.

You cannot acquire experience by making experiments. You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.

Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.
Albert Camus - Resistance, Rebellion and Death (1960)
A free press can of course be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom it will never be anything but bad. . . . Freedom is nothing else but a chance to bet better, whereas enslavement is a certainty of the worse.

Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.

In the vast reaches of the dry, cold night, thousands of stars were constantly appearing, and their sparkling icicles, loosened at once, began to slip gradually toward the horizon.

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads.

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

He who despairs over an event is a coward, but he who holds hope for the human condition is a fool.

When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
Albert Camus - La Chute (The Fall),1956
You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.

Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question.

In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.
Albert Camus - The Fall
There are always reasons for murdering a man. But there is no justification for his existence.

It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.

By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
Albert Camus - The Stranger
I have never been able, really, to regret anything in all my life. I have always been far much too absorbed in the present moment or the immediate future to think back.

Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.

A slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown.

If there is a sin against life, it consist perhaps not so much in despairing of life as hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life. Albert Camus

In the depth of winter, I learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
Albert Camus - The Rebel (1951)
He who despairs over an event is a coward, but he who holds hope for the human condition is a fool.

We rarely confide in those who are better than we are.

Live to the point of tears.

I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment, it takes place every day.

Everyone would like to behave like a pagan, with everyone else behaving like a Christian.

Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.

Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.

If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

- Albert Camus