Albert Camus (1913–60) was a French novelist, playwright, and philosopher. He was the most prominent French literary talent of his generation. He defined existentialist philosophy and dominated postwar thinking. His work is characterized by clarity, moderation, and tolerance. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957.
Camus was born in Mondovi, French Algeria, now the coastal town of Dréan. His upbringing in working-class European milieu provided the setting for many of his works. He joined the French resistance during the World War II and became co-editor (with Jean-Paul Sartre) of the left-wing movement’s bulletin Combat (1944–47.)
Born in Mondovi, French Algeria, now Dréan, Camus’s upbringing in working-class European milieu provided the setting for many of his works. He joined the French resistance during the World War II and became co-editor (with Jean-Paul Sartre) of the left-wing movement’s bulletin Combat (1944–47.)
Camus rose rapidly to fame upon the publication of his essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe (1942; The Myth of Sisyphus, 1955) and his first novel L’Étranger (1942; The Outsider, 1946.) These masterpieces discuss his philosophy of existentialism, in particular, the experience of the “absurdity” of human existence or metaphysical nihilism.
Camus’s other notable works include the novel The Plague (1947,) and the essay The Rebel (1951.) His most celebrated play Caligula (1944) envisions the notorious Roman emperor as an actor whose life is a pretense, and whose cruelty and aggression grows from a sense of self-definition. Camus’s other plays The Misunderstanding (1944,) The State of Siege (1948,) and The Just Assassins (1950) further develop his existential and moral themes.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Albert Camus
To abandon oneself to principles is really to die—and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Principles
For 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
Topics: Gratitude, Appreciation, Blessings, Life
The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants
—Albert Camus
Topics: Welfare
In the depth of winter I finally learned there was inside me an invincible summer.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Win, Potential, Hope, Summer, Adversity, Attitude, Learn, Confidence, Difficulties, Seasons
As a remedy to life in society I would suggest the big city. Nowadays, it is the only desert within our means.
—Albert Camus
Topics: City Life, Cities
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; and you are torn by the thought of the unhappiness and night you cast, by the mere fact of living, in the hearts you encounter.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Happiness
Every revolutionary ends up by becoming either an oppressor or a heretic.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Revolutions, Revolution, Revolutionaries
We are not certain, we are never certain. If we were we could reach some conclusions, and we could, at last, make others take us seriously.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Certainty, Doubt, Uncertainty
To those who despair of everything reason cannot provide a faith, but only passion, and in this case it must be the same passion that lay at the root of the despair, namely humiliation and hatred.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Despair
Integrity has no need of rules.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Integrity, Honesty, Character
To grow old is to pass from passion to compassion.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Compassion
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Existence
Life is a sum of all your choices.
—Albert Camus
Topics: One liners, Choices
What is a rebel? A man who says no.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Revolution
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 be better, whereas enslavement is a certainty of the worse.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Opportunity, Media, Doubt, Freedom, Uncertainty
An achievement is bondage.It obliges one to a higher achievement.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Achievement
Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Charity, Generosity
Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Revolution, Fight
It is normal to give away a little of one’s life in order not to lose it all.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Living, Giving, Charity
Whoever today speaks of human existence in terms of power, efficiency, and “historical tasks” is an actual or potential assassin.
—Albert Camus
The principles which men give to themselves end by overwhelming their noblest intentions.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Principles
Only a philosophy of eternity, in the world today, could justify non-violence.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Violence, Obedience
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
—Albert Camus
To know oneself, one should assert oneself. Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself. We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Identity, Awareness, Action, Being True to Yourself, Self-Knowledge, Self-Discovery
Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Spring, One liners, Autumn
Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Culture
In our wildest aberrations we dream of an equilibrium we have left behind and which we naively expect to find at the end of our errors. Childish presumption which justifies the fact that child-nations, inheriting our follies, are now directing our history.
—Albert Camus
Topics: History, Historians
It is a well-known fact that we always recognize our homeland when we are about to lose it.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Nation, Nationality, Nationalism, Nationalities
Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Music
There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Fate
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