A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.
Author
Albert Camus
102 quotations
About Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French philosopher, novelist, author, dramatist, journalist, world federalist, and political activist. He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history, and the first laureate in literature born in Africa. His works include The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall and The Rebel.
Read on Wikipedia → Find books by Albert CamusWithout work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.
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.
The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.
We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives... inside ourselves.
How can sincerity be a condition of friendship? A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.
Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.
A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.
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The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.
To insure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough, a police force is needed as well.
Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.
After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.
To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe thi…
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.
As a remedy to life in society I would suggest the big city. Nowadays, it is the only desert within our means.
The society based on production is only productive, not creative.
Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.
I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is.
All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.
There will be no lasting peace either in the heart of individuals or in social customs until death is outlawed.
Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature.
Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.
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…
Blessed are the hearts that can bend they shall never be broken.