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Albert Camus on Valentine's Day

1913–1960 France

← All quotes by Albert Camus

15 quotes

Man cannot do without beauty, and this is what our era pretends to want to disregard.

Helen's Exile (1948)

The opposite of an idealist is too often a man without love.

A Happy Death (written 1936-38 (1971)

There is not love of life without despair about life.

Without beauty, love, or danger it would be almost easy to live.

There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness.

The Plague (1947)

No human being, even the most passionately loved and passionately loving, is ever in our possession.

The Rebel (1951)

In Oran, as elsewhere, for want of time and thought, people have to love one another without knowing it.

The Plague (1947)

We have exiled beauty; the Greeks took up arms for her.

Helen's Exile (1948)

We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love — first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.

Believe me, there is no such thing as great suffering, great regret, great memory...Everything is forgotten, even great love.

A Happy Death (written 1936-38 (1971)

Let's not beat around the bush; I love life — that's my real weakness. I love it so much that I am incapable of imagining what is not life.

The Fall (1956)

He discovered the cruel paradox by which we always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love — first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.

A Happy Death (written 1936-38 (1971)

Yes, everyone sleeps at that hour, and this is reassuring, since the great longing of an unquiet heart is to possess constantly and consciously the loved one...

The Plague (1947)

[B]eauty 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.

We all have a weakness for beauty.

Disputed

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Albert Camus (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.