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Quotes from The Myth of Sisyphus — Albert Camus

1913–1960 France

← All quotes by Albert Camus

62 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)

Outside of that single fatality of death, everything, joy or happiness, is liberty.

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

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)

The absurd is born of the confrontation between the human call and the unreasonable silence of the world.

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

I don't know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I cannot know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it.

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

All systems of morality are based on the idea that an action has consequences that legitimize or cancel it. A mind imbued with the absurd merely judges that those consequences must be considered calmly.

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

A man is more a man through the things he keeps to himself than through those he says.

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

To become god is merely to be free on this earth, not to serve an immortal being.

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

A man wants to earn money in order to be happy, and his whole effort and the best of a life are devoted to the earning of that money. Happiness is forgotten; the means are taken for the end.

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

In that daily effort in which intelligence and passion mingle and delight each other, the absurd man discovers a discipline that will make up the greatest of his strengths.

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

What must be remembered in any case is that secret complicity that joins the logical and the everyday to the tragic.

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

You have already grasped that Sisyphus is the absurd hero. He is, as much through his passions as through his torture.

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

If the world were clear, art would not exist.

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

Existence is illusory and it is eternal.

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

Time will prolong time, and life will serve life.

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

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)

Everything considered, a determined soul will always manage.

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

Attribution

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