Albert Camus Quotes on Love
Albert Camus's reflections on love, gathered here, are clear-eyed and unsentimental. He observes the distortions that affection introduces into perception, for we always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love, first to their advantage and then to their disadvantage, and he insists on the limits of possession, holding that no human being, even the most passionately loved, is ever in our possession. In The Plague he notes how people, for lack of time and reflection, love one another without knowing it, while in his early novel he registers the sober truth that even great love is, in time, forgotten. Yet Camus was no enemy of love or of life; he confessed in The Fall that loving life was his real weakness. Drawn from his novels and essays, these passages weigh love honestly, without illusion.
Quotes
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Attributed to Albert Camus:
“In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love.”
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“We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love — first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage. A Happy Death (written 1938), first published as La mort heureuse (1971), as translated by Richard Howard (1972)”
Nous nous trompons toujours deux fois sur ceux que nous aimons: d'abord à leur avantage, puis à leur désavantage. -
“In Oran, as elsewhere, for want of time and thought, people have to love one another without knowing it.”
The Plague(1947) -
“No human being, even the most passionately loved and passionately loving, is ever in our possession.”
The Rebel(1951) | Part 4: Rebellion and Art -
“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) -
“We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love — first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.”
A Happy Death (written 1938), first published as La mort heureuse (1971), as translated by Richard Howard (1972) -
“Believe me, there is no such thing as great suffering, great regret, great memory...Everything is forgotten, even great love.”
A Happy Death(written 1936-38 (published in 1971, over 11 years after the author's death))