Albert Camus Quotes

Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.

You make the mistake of thinking you have to choose, that you have to do what you want, that there are conditions for happiness. What matters – all that matters, really – is the will to happiness, a kind of enormous, everpresent consciousness. The rest – women, art, suecess – is nothing but excuses. A canvas waiting for our embroideries.

Why should it be essential to love rarely in order to love much?

What is a rebel? A man who says no, but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation. He is also a man who says yes, from the moment he makes his first gesture of rebellion.

To have money is to have time.

This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart.

There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

The absurd does not liberate; it binds. It does not authorize all actions. “Everything is permitted” does not mean that nothing is forbidden.

Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.

Sometimes it takes more courage to live than to shoot yourself.

Since we’re all going to die, it’s obvious that when and how don’t matter.