Quotes from Albert Camus

If friends were flowers, I'd pick you

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

If the world were clear, art would not exist.

Nihilism is not only despair and negation, but above all the desire to despair and to negate.

There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.

You will never be able to experience everything. So, please, do poetical justice to your soul and simply experience yourself.

Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end. It arouses a revolt that can become fruitful

To those who despair of everything reason cannot provide a faith, but only passion, and in this case it must be the same passion that lay at the root of the despair, namely humiliation and hatred.

Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.

Poverty, first of all was never a misfortune for me; it was radiant with sunlight.. I owe it to my family, first of all, who lacked everything and who envied practically nothing.

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.

This is the century of fear.

There is not love of life without despair about life.

All men have a sweetness in their life. That is what helps them go on. It is towards that they turn when they feel too worn out.

Life is the sum of all your choices.

Don't wait for the Last Judgment. It happens every day.

It is normal to give away a little of one's life in order not to lose it all.

If there is sin against life, it consists¦ in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

Thinking of the future, establishing aims for oneself, having preferences-all this presupposes a belief in freedom, even if one occasionally ascertains that one doesn't feel it.

I have never been able to renounce the light, the pleasure of being, and the freedom in which I grew up.

I cling like a miser to the freedom that disappears as soon as there is an excess of things.

The current motto for all of us can only be this: without giving up anything on the plane of justice, yield nothing on the plane of freedom.

Friendship is not so simple. It is hard to get and takes a long time, but when one ha it one cannot get rid of it, one has to face it.