Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)

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.

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

Art advances between two chasms, which are frivolity and propaganda. On the ridge where the great artist moves forward, every step is an adventure, an extreme risk. In that risk, however, and only there, lies the freedom of art.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Art

Men are convinced of your arguments, your sincerity, and the seriousness of your efforts only by your death.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Death

A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.
—Albert Camus

Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Life, To Be Born Everyday, Creativity

Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.
—Albert Camus

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

To grow old is to pass from passion to compassion.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Compassion

My conclusion will be simple. It will consist of saying, in the very midst of the sound and the fury of our history: Let us rejoice. Let us rejoice, indeed, at having witnessed the death of a lying and comfort-loving Europe and at being faced with cruel truths.
—Albert Camus

Martyrs must choose between being forgotten, mocked or made use of. As for being understood, never.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Understanding

A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Books, Reading

The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.
—Albert Camus

When one has extensively pondered about men, as a career or as a vocation, one sometimes feels nostalgic for primates. At least they do not have ulterior motives.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Man, Mankind

Methods of thought which claim to give the lead to our world in the name of revolution have become, in reality, ideologies of consent and not of rebellion.
—Albert Camus

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: Blessings, Appreciation, Life, Gratitude

Life is a sum of all your choices.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Choices, One liners

Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Getting Going, Inaction, Procrastination

Integrity has no need of rules.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Honesty, Integrity, Character

Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Culture

Just as all thought, and primarily that of non-signification, signifies something, so there is no art that has no signification.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Discovery

Purely historical thought is nihilistic; it wholeheartedly accepts the evil of history.
—Albert Camus
Topics: History

Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Writing, Communication

Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Generosity, Charity

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Weight, Solitude

Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Work

The absurd is sin without God.
—Albert Camus

Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Philosophy

The principles which men give to themselves end by overwhelming their noblest intentions.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Principles

It is normal to give away a little of one’s life in order not to lose it all.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Giving, Living, Charity

Greatness consists in trying to be great. There is no other way.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Greatness

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?
—Albert Camus
Topics: Harmony, Happiness, Joy

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