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Artist Quotes by Albert Camus

54 Artist quotes by Albert Camus

All Artist quotes Albert Camus’s page

Albert Camus says the more an artist produces, the less certain he feels, as night falls on his work. He describes art as a constant tension between beauty and pain that gives freedom through risk. He also believes art should move many people by sharing common joys and woes.

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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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It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.

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If the world were clear, art would not exist.

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True artists scorn nothing.

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A true masterpiece does not tell everything.

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We have art in order not to die of life.

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It's not your pictures I like; it's your painting.

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

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

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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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Gilbert Jonas, painter, believed in his star… His own faith was not, however, without its virtues because it consisted in admitting, in…

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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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“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 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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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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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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“Just as there is a moment when the artist must stop, when the sculpture must be left as it is, the painting…

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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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“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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Art does not tolerate reason.

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A work of art is a confession.

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

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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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Every man, and for stronger reasons, every artist, wants to be recognized. So do I.

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The true work of art is always on the human scale. It is essentially the one that says, 'less.

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“Why I'm an artist, not a philosopher? Because I think in words rather than ideas.”

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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…