"Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend."
— Albert Camus

"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."
— Albert Camus

"Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is."
— Albert Camus

"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."
— Albert Camus

"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."
— Albert Camus

"Live to the point of tears."
— Albert Camus

"Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?"
— Albert Camus

"The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself."
— Albert Camus

"You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question."
— Albert Camus (The Fall)

"An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. "Can they be brought together?" This is a practical question. We must get down to it. "I despise intelligence" really means: "I cannot bear my doubts."
— Albert Camus

"Do not wait for the last judgment. It comes every day."
— Albert Camus

"At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman."
— Albert Camus

"It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners."
— Albert Camus

"There are causes worth dying for, but none worth killing for."
— Albert Camus

"You can't create experience, you undergo it."
— Albert Camus

"Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken."
— Albert Camus

"Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them."
— Albert Camus

"I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist."
— Albert Camus

"To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others."
— Albert Camus

"I have no idea what's awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing."
— Albert Camus (The Stranger)

"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."
— Albert Camus

"Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre."
— Albert Camus

"I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."
— Albert Camus

"I would rather live my life as if there is a god and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is."
— Albert Camus

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower."
— Albert Camus

"When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune."
— Albert Camus

"Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present."
— Albert Camus

"What doesn't kill me makes me stronger."
— Albert Camus

"I had only a little time left and I didn't want to waste it on God."
— Albert Camus (L'etranger)

"I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world."
— Albert Camus (L'etranger)

"A loveless world is a dead world."
— Albert Camus

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion."
— Albert Camus

"Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth."
— Albert Camus

"But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself."
— Albert Camus

"Always there comes an hour when one is weary of one's work and devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart."
— Albert Camus

"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."
— Albert Camus

"She was wearing a pair of my pajamas with the sleeves rolled up. When she laughed I wanted her again. A minute later she asked me if I loved her. I told her it didn't mean anything but that I didn't think so. She looked sad. But as we were fixing lunch, and for no apparent reason, she laughed in such a way that I kissed her."
— Albert Camus

"Peace is the only battle worth waging."
— Albert Camus

"The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth."
— Albert Camus

"What is a rebel? A man who says no."
— Albert Camus

"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest — whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories — comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer."
— Albert Camus

"She was breathing deeply, she forgot the cold, the weight of beings, the insane or static life, the long anguish of living or dying. After so many years running from fear, fleeing crazily, uselessly, she was finally coming to a halt. At the same time she seemed to be recovering her roots, and the sap rose anew in her body, which was no longer trembling. Pressing her whole belly against the parapet, leaning toward the wheeling sky, she was only waiting for her pounding heart to settle down, and for the silence to form in her. The last constellations of stars fell in bunches a little lower on the horizon of the desert, and stood motionless. Then, with an unbearable sweetness, the waters of the night began to fill her, submerging the cold, rising gradually to the center of her being, and overflowing wave upon wave to her moaning mouth. A moment later, the whole sky stretched out above her as she lay with her back against the cold earth."
— Albert Camus

"Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better."
— Albert Camus

"Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified at having, for years, heard nothing which sounded human. It is always the same words telling the same lies. And the fact that men accept this, that the people’s anger has not destroyed these hollow clowns, strikes me as proof that men attribute no importance to the way they are governed; that they gamble – yes, gamble – with a whole part of their life and their so called 'vital interests."
— Albert Camus

"A person's life purpose is nothing more than to rediscover, through the detours of art or love or passionate work, those one or two images in the presence of which his heart first opened."
— Albert Camus

"We all carry within us places of exile, our crimes, our ravages. Our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to transform them in ourselves and others."
— Albert Camus

"Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it."
— Albert Camus

"After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books."
— Albert Camus

"ترجیح میدهم طوری زندگی کنم که گویی خدا هست و وقتی مُردم بفهمم نیست، تا اینکه طوری زندگی کنم که انگار خدا نیست و وقتی مُردم بفهمم که هست."
— Albert Camus

"There are means that cannot be excused. And I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice. I don't want just any greatness for it, particularly a greatness born of blood and falsehood. I want to keep it alive by keeping justice alive."
— Albert Camus