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Art Quotes by Albert Camus

62 Art quotes by Albert Camus

All Art quotes Albert Camus’s page

A night sky can fall over an artist’s path, making each step feel risky. The quotes describe art as a daring adventure that offers freedom and lets creators share joy and sorrow with many. They also call every genuine piece a gift left for the future.

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Art and revolt will die only with the last man.

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Without freedom there is no art.

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If the world were clear, art would not exist.

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...Any authentic creation is a gift to the future.

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We have art in order not to die of life.

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Art does not tolerate reason.

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A work of art is a confession.

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A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.

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Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

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It takes time to live. Like any work of art, life needs to be thought about.

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If we understood the enigmas of life there would be no need for art.

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Every authentic work of art is a gift offered to the future.

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It's not the struggle that makes us artists, but Art that makes us struggle.

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To think is first of all to create a world (or to limit one's own world, which comes to the same thing).

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If it adapts itself to what the majority of our society wants, art will be a meaningless recreation.

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“But perhaps the the great work of art has less importance in itself than in the ordeal it demands of a man…

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To me, art is not a solitary delight. It is a means of stirring the greatest number of men by providing them…

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“Every artist thus keeps within himself a single source which nourishes during his lifetime what he is and what he says.”

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There is not a single true work of art that has not in the end added to the inner freedom insight and…

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After all perhaps the greatness of art lies in the perpetual tension between beauty and pain, the love of men and the…

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A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and…

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The only really committed artist is he who, without refusing to take part in the combat, at least refuses to join the…

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On the ridge where the great artist moves forward, every step is an adventure, an extreme risk. In that risk, however, and…

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It is impossible to give a clear account of the world, but art can teach us to reproduce it-just as the world…

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“Yesterday it was love. Today the great passions of unity and liberty disrupt the world. yesterday love led to individual death. Today…

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“To work and create 'for nothing', to sculpture in clay, to know that one's creation has no future, to see one's work…

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“I'm the only true artist Rome has known - the only one, believe me - to match his inspiration with his deeds.…

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Realism should only be the means of expression of religious genius... or, at the other extreme, the artistic expressions of monkeys which…

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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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The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself…

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And often he who has chosen the fate of the artist because he felt himself to be different soon realizes that he…

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“Any thought that abandons unity glorifies diversity. And diversity is the home of art. The only thought to liberate the mind is…

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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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There is a metaphysical honour in ending the world's absurdity. Conquest or play-acting, multiple loves, absurd revolt are tributes that man pays…

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“Contrary to the current presumption, if there is any man who has no right to solitude, it is the artist. Art cannot…

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In Holland, everyone is an expert in painting and in tulips.

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Imagination offers people consolation for what they cannot be, and humor for what they actually are.

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Artistic creation is a demand for unity and a rejection of the world.

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The work of art is born of the intelligence's refusal to reason the concrete. It marks the triumph of the carnal.

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In a world that has ceased to believe in sin, the artist is responsible for the preaching.

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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…