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Life Quotes by Albert Camus

223 Life quotes by Albert Camus

All Life quotes Albert Camus’s page

Albert Camus writes that life can feel meaningless, yet it can still be worth living when we accept that fact. He says our choices add up to the whole life, and love or art can give us a glimpse of purpose. He also notes that daily work may seem absurd, but it is part of the human condition.

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At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman.

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There is not love of life without despair about life.

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“A life, whose purpose is money, is death.”

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It's better to bet on this life than on the next.

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“There are accidents that last the whole life.”

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Without work all life goes rotten.

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I rebel; therefore I exist.

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Everybody knows life isn't worth living.

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“O my soul, do not aspire to immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the possible Pindar, Pythian iii”

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So all a man could win in the conflict between plague and life was knowledge and memories.

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There is a life and there is a death, and there are beauty and melancholy between.

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We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

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Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure.

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Nothing in life is worth, turning your back on, if you love it.

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

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I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.

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And for all his life it would be kindness and love that made him cry, never pain or persecution, which on the…

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There is not one talent for living and another for creating. The same suffices for both. And one can be sure that…

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Accept life, take it as it is? Stupid. The means of doing otherwise? Far from our having to take it, it is…

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Working conditions for me have always been those of the monastic life: solitude and frugality. Except for frugality, they are contrary to…

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... it is true that I do not respect [human life] more than I respect my own life. And if it is…

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I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live my…

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“How did I picture the life after the grave? I Fairly bawled out at him: 'A life in which I can remember…

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As a remedy to life in society I would suggest the big city. Nowadays, it is the only desert within our means.

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“To feel one’s attachment to a certain region, one’s love for a certain group of men, to know that there is always…

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“Before her the stars were falling one by one and being snuffed out among the stones of the desert, and each time…

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“Living with one’s passions amounts to living with one’s sufferings, which are the counterpoise, the corrective, the balance and the price. When…

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“The only picture of Tarrou he would always have would be the picture of a man who firmly gripped the steering-wheel of…

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“I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn't mine anymore, but one in which I'd found the simplest and most…

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“Actually the contents of these books mattered little. What did matter was what they first felt when they went into the library,…

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Love cannot accept what it is. Everywhere on earth it cries out against kindness, compassion, intelligence, everything that leads to compromise. Love…

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“On some evenings it would sadden Jacques to look at them (workers). Until then he had only known the riches and the…

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“It is a matter of living in that state of the absurd I know on what it is founded, this mind and…

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“today he felt life, youth, people slipping away from him, without being able to hold on to any of them, left with…

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“In different degrees, in every part of the town, men and women had been yearning for a reunion, not of the same…

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The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be…

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“He wasn’t even sure he was alive, because he was living like a dead man. Whereas it looked as if I was…

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“I, too, felt ready to start life all over again. It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me…

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“I was at ease in everything, to be sure, but at the same time satisfied with nothing. Each joy made me desire…

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“Everyone tries to make his life a work of art. We want love to last and we know that it does not…

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More by Albert Camus

“The whole town rushed outside to celebrate this crowded minute when the time of suffering had ended and the time of forgetting had not…

Generally, I like all islands. There, it is easier to rule.

Being is good, but getting rich is better… If the gods had only the riches of men's adoration, they would be as poor as…

The more I produce, the less I am certain. On the road along which the artist walks, night falls ever more densely. Finally, he…

“Having been, not only mutilated in our country, wounded in our very flesh, but also divested of our most beautiful images, for you gave…

I've seen of enough of people who die for an idea. I don't believe in heroism; I know it's easy and I've learned it…

The best are led to make greater demands upon themselves. As for those who succumb, they did not deserve to survive.

“Then he asked me if I wasn’t interested in a change of life. I said that people never change their lives, that in any…

Life is meaningless, but worth living, provided you recognize it's meaningless.

Thinking of the future, establishing aims for oneself, having preferences-all this presupposes a belief in freedom, even if one occasionally ascertains that one doesn't…

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

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

“We love people not because for good they did for us, but for good we did for them.”

You have so much inside you, and the noblest happiness of all. Don’t just wait for a man to come along. That’s the mistake…

The desire for possession is insatiable, to such a point that it can survive even love itself. To love, therefore, is to sterilize the…