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The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.

Albert Camus

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Albert Camus
Age: 46 †
Born: 1913
Born: November 7
Died: 1960
Died: January 4
Author
Essayist
French Resistance Fighter
Journalist
Novelist
Philosopher
Playwright
Poet
Professor
Screenwriter
Writer
Drean
Camus
Writer
Purpose
Keep
Writing
Destroying
Civilization

More quotes by Albert Camus

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My chief occupation, despite appearances, has always been love.
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The only serious question in life is whether to kill yourself or not.
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We turn toward God only to obtain the impossible.
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A man who has become conscious of the absurd is for ever bound to it.
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What, in fact, is a novel but a universe in which action is endowed with form, where final words are pronounced, where people possess one another completely, and where life assumes the aspect of destiny?
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Yes, I know what passion would fill me with all its power. Before, I was too young. I got in the way. Now I know that acting and loving and suffering is living, of course, but it’s only living insofar as you can be transparent and accept your fate, like the unique reflection of a rainbow of joys and passions which is the same for everyone.
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In this vast country that he had so loved, he was alone.
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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 sea-shore.
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For the existentials, negation is their God. To be precise, that god is maintained only through the negation of human reason. But, like suicides, gods change with men.
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A writer cannot put himself today in service of those who make history he is at the service of those who suffer it.
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When I was young I asked more of people than they could give: everlasting friendship, endless feeling. Now I know to ask less of them than they can give: a straightforward companionship. And their feelings, their friendship, their generous actions seem in my eyes to be wholly miraculous: a consequence of grace alone.
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Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose a future.
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Realism should only be the means of expression of religious genius... or, at the other extreme, the artistic expressions of monkeys which are quite satisfied with mere imitation. In fact, art is never realistic though sometimes it is tempted to be. To be really realistic a description would have to be endless.
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Poor and free rather than rich and enslaved. Of course, men want to be both rich and free, and this is what leads them at times to be poor and enslaved.
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Liberty is dangerous, as hard to get along with as it is exciting.
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No code of ethics and no effort are justifiable a priori in the face of the cruel mathematics that command our condition.
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The absurd is lucid reason noting its limits.
Albert Camus
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Thinking of the future, establishing aims for oneself, having preferences-all this presupposes a belief in freedom, even if one occasionally ascertains that one doesn't feel it.
Albert Camus
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Absolute justice is achieved by the suppression of all contradiction, therefore it destroys freedom.
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It is not humiliating to be unhappy. Physical suffering is sometimes humiliating, but the suffering of being cannot be, it is life.
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