“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”
“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”
“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”
“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”
“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead Walk beside me… just be my friend”
“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”
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“But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.”
“I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't.”
“The struggle to the top is in itself enough to fulfill the human heart. Sisyphus should be regarded as happy.”
“What is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying.”
“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”
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“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
“You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.”
“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
“Life is the sum of all your choices.”
“I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgement, it takes place every day.”
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“In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.”
“Live to the point of tears.”
“To know oneself, one should assert oneself.”
“There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.”
“A novel is never anything but a philosophy put into images.”
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“Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined. Society has but little connection with such beginnings. The worm is in man's heart. That is where it must be sought. One must follow and understand this fatal game that leads from lucidity in the face of existence to flight from light.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.”
“When I look at my life and its secret colours, I feel like bursting into tears.”
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“We rarely confide in those who are better than we are.”
“The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
“Love cannot accept what it is. Everywhere on earth it cries out against kindness, compassion, intelligence, everything that leads to compromise. Love demands the impossible, the absolute, the sky on fire, inexhaustible springtime, life after death, and death itself transfigured into eternal life.”
“Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present.”
“I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist.”
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“And he knew, also, what the old man was thinking as his tears flowed, and he, Rieux, thought it too: that a loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one's work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart.”
“If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.”
“The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.”
“Don't believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves.”
“No matter what cause one defends, it will suffer permanent disgrace if one resorts to blind attacks on crowds of innocent people.”
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“For 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.”
“I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L'Illustration. Something desperate, you know.”
“Why should it be essential to love rarely in order to love much?”
“A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.”
“The reasoning is classic in its clarity. If God does not exist, Kirilov is god. If God does not exist, Kirilov must kill himself. Kirilov must therefore kill himself to become god. That logic is absurd, but it is what is needed.”
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“Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood - never.”
“We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love - first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.”
“The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.”
“Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.”
“Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.”
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“To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.”
“Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.”
“He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.”