222 quotes
The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
A nihilist is not one who believes in nothing, but one who does not believe in what exists.
The Rebel (1951)
Man cannot do without beauty, and this is what our era pretends to want to disregard.
Helen's Exile (1948)
A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously.
The Rebel (1951)
Knowing that certain nights whose sweetness lingers will keep returning to the earth and sea after we are gone, yes, this helps us to die.
The opposite of an idealist is too often a man without love.
A Happy Death (written 1936-38 (1971)
Hungary conquered and in chains has done more for freedom and justice than any people for twenty years.
The Blood of the Hungarians (1957)
There is not love of life without despair about life.
The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.
Resistance, Rebellion, and Death (1960)
The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning.
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.
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.
Outside of that single fatality of death, everything, joy or happiness, is liberty.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
In order to cease being a doubtful case, one has to cease being, that's all.
The Fall (1956)
Nothing can discourage the appetite for divinity in the heart of man.
The Rebel (1951)
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.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
A novel is never anything but a philosophy put into images.
Absolute freedom mocks at justice. Absolute justice denies freedom. To be fruitful, the two ideas must find their limits in each other.
The Rebel (1951)
Art, at least, teaches us that man cannot be explained by history alone and that he also finds a reason for his existence in the order of nature.
The Rebel (1951)
Every ideology is contrary to human psychology.
The Rebel (1951)