The Fall

by Albert Camus

Anyone who has considerably meditated on man, by profession or vocation, is led to feel nostalgia for the primates. They at least don’t have any ulterior motives.

in all things we are merely “in a way.”

What a cleanup! Seventy-five thousand Jews deported or assassinated; that’s real vacuum-cleaning.

When one has no character one has to apply a method.

But, seen from the outside, it looked rather like a passion.

How many crimes committed merely because their authors could not endure being wrong!

I enjoyed my own nature to the fullest, and we all know that there lies happiness, although, to soothe one another mutually, we occasionally pretend to condemn such joys as selfishness.

If I had the luck, certain mornings, to give up my seat in the bus or subway to someone who obviously deserved it, to pick up some object an old lady had dropped and return it to her with a smile I knew well, or merely to forfeit my taxi to someone in a greater hurry than I, it was a red-letter day.

I managed to love simultaneously—and this is not easy—women and justice;

It’s a board chairman’s emotion; it comes cheap, after catastrophes.

Friendship is less simple. It is long and hard to obtain, but when one has it there’s no getting rid of it; one simply has to cope with it.

As for suicide, they would be more likely to push you to it, by virtue of what you owe to yourself, according to them.

Those whose duty is to love us—I mean relatives and connections

Have you noticed that death alone awakens our feelings?

But do you know why we are always more just and more generous toward the dead? The reason is simple. With them there is no obligation.

That’s the way man is, cher monsieur. He has two faces: he can’t love without self-love.

I used to shake everyone’s hand, moreover, being doubly sure to miss no one. Without much effort, such cordial simplicity won me the popularity so necessary to my contentment.

Slavery?—certainly not, we are against it! That we should be forced to establish it at home or in our factories—well, that’s natural; but boasting about it, that’s the limit!

All those books barely read, those friends barely loved, those cities barely visited, those women barely possessed! I went through the gestures out of boredom or absent-mindedness.

A totally insignificant story, in your opinion? Probably. Still it took me some time to forget it, and that’s what counts.

The truth is that every intelligent man, as you know, dreams of being a gangster and of ruling over society by force alone.

You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.

Of course, true love is exceptional—two or three times a century, more or less. The rest of the time there is vanity or boredom.

Our feminine friends have in common with Bonaparte the belief that they can succeed where everyone else has failed.

Hence I played the game. I knew they didn’t like one to reveal one’s purpose too quickly.

I often changed parts, but it was always the same play.

The act of love, for instance, is a confession.

No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures—have

Her death would, on the one hand, have definitively fixed our relationship and, on the other, removed its compulsion.

In short, for me to live happily it was essential for the creatures I chose not to live at all. They must receive their life, sporadically, only at my bidding.

Well, it’s probably shame, then, or one of those silly emotions that have to do with honor.

I wanted to run and yet didn’t stir.

I told myself that I had to be quick and I felt an irresistible weakness steal over me.

Isn’t it the most beautiful negative landscape?

Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death.

Martyrs, cher ami, must choose between being forgotten, mocked, or made use of. As for being understood—never!

Since I was bleeding slightly, there was no escape for me; they would devour me.

Your successes and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them. But to be happy it is essential not to be too concerned with others. Consequently, there is no escape. Happy and judged, or absolved and wretched.

People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves.

We are all exceptional cases. We all want to appeal against something! Each of us insists on being innocent at all cost, even if he has to accuse the whole human race and heaven itself.

Wealth, cher ami, is not quite acquittal, but reprieve, and that’s always worth taking.

Above all, don’t believe your friends when they ask you to be sincere with them.

I have never been really able to believe that human affairs were serious matters.

I had no idea where the serious might lie, except that it was not in all this I saw around me—which seemed to me merely an amusing game, or tiresome.

To be sure, I occasionally pretended to take life seriously.

We are making progress and yet nothing is changing.

Inasmuch as I needed to love and be loved, I thought I was in love. In other words, I acted the fool.

If I answered yes, I found myself committed beyond my real feelings. If I dared to say no, I ran the risk of ceasing to be loved, and I would suffer therefor.

The greater the threat to the feeling in which I had hoped to find calm, the more I demanded that feeling of my partner.

Such conviction, as you must know, is contagious.