Albert Camus Quotes on Life
Camus's Myth of Sisyphus opens with the claim that the only serious philosophical question is whether life is worth living. The absurd is the encounter between human desire for meaning and the silent indifference of the universe — a condition that cannot be dissolved by either suicide or religious leap, but which can be lived in lucid revolt. The Rebel extends the analysis to the political and historical domain, defending a non-totalitarian solidarity against the metaphysical revolts that issued in twentieth-century revolutionary terror.
Quotes
-
“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
Original French: La lutte elle-même vers les sommets suffit à remplir un cœur d'homme; il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux. | Variant translation: The fight itself towards the summits suffices to fill a heart of man; it is necessary to imagine Sisyphus happy. -
“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
O light ! This is the cry of all the characters of ancient drama brought face to face with their fate. This last resort was ours, too, and I knew it now. In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer . -
“The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.”
Original French: La lutte elle-même vers les sommets suffit à remplir un cœur d'homme; il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux. | Variant translation: The fight itself towards the summits suffices to fill a heart of man; it is necessary to imagine Sisyphus happy. -
“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”
Notebooks 1935-1942 -
“I rebel; therefore we exist.”
The Rebel (L'Homme Revolte), 1951 -
Attributed to Albert Camus:
“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”
-
Attributed to Albert Camus:
“Live to the point of tears.”
-
“A novel is never anything but a philosophy put into images. And in a good novel, the whole of the philosophy has passed into the images. But if once the philosophy overflows the characters and action, and therefore looks like a label stuck on the work, the plot loses its authenticity and the novel its life. Nevertheless, a work that is to last cannot dispense with profound ideas. And this secret fusion between experiences and ideas, between life and reflection on the meaning of life, is what makes the great novelist.”
Review of Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre , published in the newspaper Alger Républicain (20 October 1938), p. 5; reprinted in Selected Essays and Notebooks , translated and edited by Philip Thody -
“Let's not beat around the bush; I love life — that's my real weakness. I love it so much that I am incapable of imagining what is not life.”
The Fall(1956) -
“The aim of art , the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily.”
Resistance, Rebellion, and Death(1960) | "The Artist and His Time" -
“If there is a sin against life , it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.”
"Summer in Algiers" , The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (1955) -
“It takes time to live. Like any work of art , life needs to be thought about.”
A Happy Death(written 1936-38 (published in 1971, over 11 years after the author's death))