Albert Camus

"I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers."

The Four Conditions of Happiness:

Life in the open air, Love for another being,Freedom from ambition,Creation

Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.

There are some words that I have never really understood, such as sin. . . . For if there is sin against life, it lies perhaps less in despairing of it than in hoping for another life and evading the implacable grandeur of the one we have.

Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.

There are places where the mind dies so that a truth which is its very denial may be born.

We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

It is not rebellion itself which is noble but the demands it makes upon us.

As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself - so like a brother, really - I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.

We are not certain, we are never certain. If we were we could reach some conclusions, and we could, at last, make others take us seriously.