1. "Absolute freedom mocks at justice. Absolute justice denies freedom."
2. “Absolute justice is achieved by the suppression of all contradiction: therefore it destroys freedom.”’
3. "...a burning and frigid, transparent and limited universe in which nothing is possible but everything is given."
4. "According to him, human justice was nothing and divine justice was everything. I pointed out that it was the former that had condemned me. His response was that it hadn't washed away my sin for all that. I told him I didn't know what a sin was. All they had told me was that I was guilty. I was guilty, I was paying for it, and nothing more could be asked of me."
5. ”A free press can be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom a press will never be anything but bad.”
6. ”All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant's revolving door.”
7. "An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual = one who splits himself in two. I like that. I am happy to be both (halves)."
8. “An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.”
9. "A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images."
10. "Art does not tolerate reason."
11. "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."
12. “A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.”
13. "A sub-clerk in the post-office is the equal of a conqueror if consciousness is common to them."
14. "At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face."
15. "At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise . . . that denseness and that strangeness of the world is absurd."
16. ”Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”
17. "Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time."
18. "Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined."
19. ”But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?”
20. “Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question.”
21. “Do not wait for the last judgment. It takes place every day.”
22. “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.”
23. "Don't wait for the Last Judgement. It is taking place everyday."
24. "Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being."
25. "Every revolutionary ends by becoming either an oppressor or a heretic."
26. “Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified for 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."”
27. "For he had played his part, fashioned his role. perfected one man's duty, which is to be happy. Not for long, no doubt. He had destroyed the obstacle, and this inner brother he had engendered in himself - what did it matter if he existed for two or for twenty years? Happiness was the fact he had existed."
28. “Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.”
29. "Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship--never."
30. "From now on, it can be said that plague was the concern of all of us. Hitherto, surprised as he may have been by the strange things happening around him, each individual citizen had gone about his business as usual, so far as this was possible. And no doubt he would have continued doing so. But once the town gates were shut, every one of us realized that all, the narrator included, were, so to speak, in the same boat, and each one of us would have to adapt himself to the new conditions of life. Thus, for example, a feeling normally as individual as the ache of separation from those one loves suddenly became a feeling in which all shared alike and - together with fear - the greatest affliction of the long period of exile that lay ahead."
31. ”How many crimes committed merely because their authors could not endure being wrong!”
32. ”I am well aware that an addiction to silk underwear does not necessarily imply that one's feet are dirty. None the less, style, like sheer silk, too often hides eczema.”
33. "I don't want to be a genius - I have enough problems just trying to be a man."
34. "If, after all, men cannot always make history have meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one."
35. "I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints."
36. "If it is true that the only paradises are those we have lost, I know what name to give the tender and inhuman something that dwells in me today."
37. "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."
38. “I have said that the world is absurd but I spoke too soon. All we can say is that this world in and of itself is not reasonable. What is absurd, though, is the conflict between this irrationality and man's desperate wish for intelligibility.”
39. "I know of only one duty, and that is to love."
40. "I love my country too much to be a nationalist."
41. "In a universe suddenly divested of illusion and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land."
42. "In order to exist just once in the world, it is necessary never again to exist."
43. "Instead of killing and dying in order to produce the being that we are not, we have to live and let live in order to create what we are."
44. ”Integrity has no need of rules.”
45. "In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."
46. "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."
47. "It is impossible to give a clear account of the world, but art can teach us to reproduce it-just as the world reproduces itself in the course of its eternal gyrations. The primordial sea indefatigably repeats the same words and casts up the same astonished beings on the same seashore."
48. "It is normal to give away a little of one's life in order not to lose it all."
49. "It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life had to have a meaning to be lived. It now becomes clear, on the contrary, that it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning."
50. "Just as there is a moment when the artist must stop, when the sculpture must be left as it is, the painting untouched - just as a determination not to know serves the maker more than all the resources of clairvoyance - so there must be a minimum of ignorance in order to perfect a life of happiness. Those who lack such a thing must set out acquiring it: unintelligence must be earned."
51. "Life can be magnificent and overwhelming- that is its whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger, it would be almost easy to live."
52. “Life is absurd.”
53. "Life is the sum of all your choices."
54. “Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.”
55. "Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears."
56. "More and more, revolution has found itself delivered into the hands of its bureaucrats and doctrinaires on the one hand, and to enfeebled and bewildered masses on the other."
57. "Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal."
58. “Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.”
59. "Politics and the shape of mankind are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness. Men who have greatness within them don't concern themselves with politics."
60. "Punishment without judgment is bearable. It has a name, besides, that guarantees our innocence: it is called misfortune."
61. “Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature.”’
62. "Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar than into the man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object."
63. "That must be wonderful; I have no idea of what it means."
64. ”The absurd has meaning only in so far as it is not agreed to.”
65. "The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world."
66. ”The absurd is sin without God.”
67. “The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.”
68. "The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily. No great work has ever been based on hatred and contempt. On the contrary, there is not a single true work of art that has not in the end added to the inner freedom of each person who has known and loved it."
69. "The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor."
70. "The innocent is the person who explains nothing."
71. "The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind."
72. "The nobility of our calling will always be rooted in two commitments difficult to observe: refusal to lie about what we know, and resistance to oppression."
73. "There are places where the mind dies so that a truth which is its very denial may be born."
74. "There exists an obvious fact that seems utterly moral; namely, that a man is always a prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them."
75. “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."
76. “There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.”
77. "The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a human heart. One should imagine Sisyphus happy."
78. "The work of art is born of the intelligence`s refusal to reason the concrete."
79. "The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody."
80. “They now knew that if there is one thing which can always be desired and
sometimes obtained, it is human tenderness."
81. "Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it."
82. “Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.”
83. "To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, an no-one in his right mind will believe this today."
84. "To be really realistic a description would have to be endless."
85. "To insure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough, a police force is needed as well."
86. ”To know oneself, one should assert oneself.”
87. “Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.”
88. “To think is first of all to create a world (or to limit one's own world, which comes to the same thing).
89. "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."
90. "True debauchery is liberating because it creates no obligations. In it you possess only yourself; hence it remains the favorite pastime of the great lovers of their own person."
91. ”Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.”
92. "Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil."
93. "We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes, and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others."
94. "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."
95. "We call love what binds us to certain creatures only by reference to a collective way of seeing for which books and legends are responsible."
96. "We cannot assert the innocence of anyone, whereas we can state with certainty the guilt of all. Every man testifies to the crime of all the others - that is my faith and my hope."
97. "We come into the world laden with the weight of an infinite necessity."
98. "What is a rebel? A man who says no."
99. "When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him; and you are torn by the thought of the unhappiness and night you cast, by the mere fact of living, in the hearts you encounter."
100. "Whoever today speaks of human existence in terms of power, efficiency, and ''historical tasks'' is an actual or potential assassin."
101. "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."
102. “Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.”
103. “Without work life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies."
104. “You are forgiven for your happiness and your successes only if you generously consent to share them.”
105. "You cannot acquire experience by making experiments. You cannot create experience. You must undergo it."
106. “You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.”
107. “You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer 'yes' without having asked any clear question.”
108. ”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.”
