Albert Camus

"Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object."

"Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better."

"There is the good and the bad, the great and the low, the just and the unjust. I swear to you that all that will never change."

"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."

"A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing."

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

"Truth is mysterious, elusive, always to be conquered. Liberty is dangerous, as hard to live with as it is elating. We must march toward these two goals, painfully but resolutely, certain in advance of our failings on so long a road."

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

"Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful."

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

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower."

"Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny."

"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."

"I am not made for politics because I am incapable of wanting or accepting the death of the adversary."

"I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice."

"In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limits that it discovers in itself - limits where minds meet, and in meeting, begin to exist."

"In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer."

"Real nobility is based on scorn, courage, and profound indifference."

"The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone."

"The society based on production is only productive, not creative."

"Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it."

"To be famous, in fact, one has only to kill one's landlady."

"To cut short the question of the law of retaliation, we must note that even in its primitive form it can operate only between two individuals of whom one is absolutely innocent, and the other absolutely guilty. The victim, to be sure, is innocent. But can the society that is supposed to represent the victim lay claim to innocence?"

"To insure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough, a police force is needed as well."

"To know oneself, one should assert oneself."

"We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death, the body maintains its irreparable lead."

"When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it."

"Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies."

"Working conditions for me have always been those of the monastic life: solitude and frugality. Except for frugality, they are contrary to my nature, so much so that work is a violence I do to myself."

"You cannot create experience. You must undergo it."