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
Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Solitude, Weight
The desire for possession is insatiable, to such a point that it can survive even love itself. To love, therefore, is to sterilize the person one loves.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Love
The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Work, Futility, Weight, Labor
For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Crime, Criminals
Can one be a saint if God does not exist? That is the only concrete problem I know of today.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Problems
As usual I finish the day before the sea, sumptuous this evening beneath the moon, which writes Arab symbols with phosphorescent streaks on the slow swells. There is no end to the sky and the waters. How well they accompany sadness!
—Albert Camus
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
On certain mornings, as we turn a corner,
an exquisite dew falls on our heart
and then vanishes.
But the freshness lingers, and this, always,
is what the heart needs.
The earth must have risen in just such a light
the morning the world was born.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Creation
Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Writing, Communication
If Christianity is pessimistic as to man, it is optimistic as to human destiny. Well, I can say that, pessimistic as to human destiny, I am optimistic as to man.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Optimism
We call first truths those we discover after all the others.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Truth
More and more, when faced with the world of men, the only reaction is one of individualism. Man alone is an end unto himself. Everything one tries to do for the common good ends in failure.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Individuality
Martyrs must choose between being forgotten, mocked or made use of. As for being understood, never.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Understanding
Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children. And if you don’t help us, who else in the world can help us do this?
—Albert Camus
Liberty is dangerous.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Liberty
The rebel can never find peace. He knows what is good and, despite himself, does evil. The value which supports him is never given to him once and for all—he must fight to uphold it, unceasingly.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Revolution, Peace
Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Virtue, Virtues
Don’t walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me, I may not lead. Walk beside me and just be my friend.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Now, Follow, Friends, Friend, Friendship, Feelings
The principles which men give to themselves end by overwhelming their noblest intentions.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Principles
Every minute of life carries with it its miraculous value, and its face of eternal youth.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Value of a Day, Time Management
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: Freedom, Opportunity, Uncertainty, Media, Doubt
Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Energy, How to Live
Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Autumn, Spring, One liners
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
The real passion of the twentieth century is servitude.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Twentieth Century
The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism.
—Albert Camus
Our civilization survives in the complacency of cowardly or malignant minds—a sacrifice to the vanity of aging adolescents. In 1953, excess is always a comfort, and sometimes a career.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Twentieth Century
Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.
—Albert Camus
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
Revolution, in order to be creative, cannot do without either a moral or metaphysical rule to balance the insanity of history.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Revolutions, Revolution
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