62 quotes
The actor's realm is that of the fleeting.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
Opinions differ as to the reasons why he became the futile laborer of the underworld. To begin with, he is accused of a certain levity in regard to the gods. He stole their secrets.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
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 afterward. These are games; one must first answer.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
The preceding merely defines a way of thinking. But the point is to live.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
I don't know whether or not it has been sufficiently pointed out that it is not an outburst of relief or of joy, but rather a bitter acknowledgment of a fact.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
I said that the world is absurd, but I was too hasty. This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
I start out here from the principle of his innocence.
That innocence is to be feared.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be the history of its successive regrets and its impotences.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
With the exception of professional rationalists, today people despair of true knowledge. If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be history of its successive regrets and impotences.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
I do not want to found anything on the incomprehensible. I want to know whether I can live with what I know and with that alone.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
The world evades us because it becomes itself again. That stage scenery masked by habit becomes what it is. It withdraws at a distance from us.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
The only truth that might seem instructive to him is not formal: it comes to life and unfolds in men. The absurd mind cannot so much expect ethical rules at the end of its reasoning as, rather, illustrations and the breath of human lives.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
At this point of his effort man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
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.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
A symbol is always in general and, however precise its translation, an artist can restore to it only its movement: there is no word-for-word rendering. Moreover, nothing is harder to understand than a symbolic work. A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
Homer tells us also that Sisyphus had put Death in chains. Pluto could not endure the sight of his deserted, silent empire. He dispatched the god of war, who liberated Death from the hands of her conqueror.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. (This quotation is from Notebook IV in Notebooks: 1942-1951, not Myth of Sisyphus. The quotation appears in none of Camus books you find in bookstores).
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)