Albert Camus Quotes on Time
Albert Camus's reflections on time, gathered here, place a consistent emphasis on the present. Real generosity toward the future, he wrote, lies in giving all to the present, a stance that fits his absurdist conviction that this life, and not some promised beyond, is what human beings actually have. Camus treats time as something that genuine living and genuine happiness require: happiness is a long patience, and it takes time to live, since a life, like a work of art, must be thought about. He also reckons with historical time, observing that human beings neither begin history nor stand wholly innocent of it, since they continue it. Drawn from The Rebel, The Plague, and the early novel A Happy Death, these passages weigh time as both a personal and a historical reality.
Quotes
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“Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.”
La vraie générosité envers l'avenir consiste à tout donner au présent. -
“Art, at least, teaches us that man cannot be explained by history alone and that he also finds a reason for his existence in the order of nature.”
The Rebel(1951) | Part 4: Rebellion and Art -
“With the exception of professional rationalists, today people despair of true knowledge. If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be history of its successive regrets and impotences.”
An Absurd Reasoning | Absurd Walls -
“In Oran, as elsewhere, for want of time and thought, people have to love one another without knowing it.”
The Plague(1947) -
“In the end, man is not entirely guilty — he did not start history. Nor is he wholly innocent — he continues it.”
The Rebel(1951) | Part 5: Thought at the Meridian (Section: Moderation and Excess) -
“Only it takes time to be happy. A lot of time. Happiness , too, is a long patience .”
A Happy Death(written 1936-38 (published in 1971, over 11 years after the author's death)) -
“If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be the history of its successive regrets and its impotences.”
Absurd Creation -
“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)) -
“To have time was at once the most magnificent and the most dangerous of experiments. Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.”
A Happy Death(written 1936-38 (published in 1971, over 11 years after the author's death))