Quote

I would rather not have upset him, but I couldn't see any reason to change my life. Looking back on it, I wasn't unhappy. When I was a student, I had lots of ambitions like that. But when I had to give up my studies I learned very quickly that none of it really mattered.

Albert Camus

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Give
Couldn
Student
Back
Students
Upset
Reason
Learned
Lots
Giving
Wasn
Stranger
Really
Study
Unhappy
Would
Looking
Quickly
Mattered
Life
Rather
Ambition
Ambitions
Like
Change
None
Studies

More quotes by Albert Camus

Image
God is not necessary to create culpability, or to punish. Our fellow men are enough for that, helped by ourselves.
Albert Camus
Image
Do not wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.
Albert Camus
Image
There are some individuals who have too strong a craving, a will, and a nostalgia for happiness ever to reach it. They always retain a bitter and passionate aftertaste, and that's the best they can hope for.
Albert Camus
Image
My profession lent itself nicely to my vocation for heights. It freed me of any bitterness towards my fellow men, who were alwaysin my debt, without my owing them anything. It placed me above the judge whom, I in turn judged, above the defendant whom I forced into gratitude.
Albert Camus
Image
Truth is not a virtue, but a passion. It is never charitable.
Albert Camus
Image
If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy.
Albert Camus
Image
Thus, in a middle course between these heights and depths, they drifted through life rather than lived, the prey of aimless days and sterile memories, like wandering shadows that could have acquired substance only by consenting to root themselves in the solid earth of their distress.
Albert Camus
Image
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.
Albert Camus
Image
[Love] is the type of disease that spares neither the intelligent nor the idiotic.
Albert Camus
Image
... unhappiness is like marriage. We believe we chose it, but then it is choosing us. That is how it is, we can do nothing about it.
Albert Camus
Image
Mostly, I could tell, I made him feel uncomfortable. He didn't understand me, and he was sort of holding it against me. I felt the urge to reassure him that I was like everybody else, just like everybody else. But really there wasn't much point, and I gave up the idea out of laziness.
Albert Camus
Image
From Pandora's Box, where all the ills of humanity swarmed, the Greeks drew out hope after all the others, as the most dreadful of all. I know no more stirring symbol for, contrary to the general belief, hope equals resignation. And to live is not to resign oneself.
Albert Camus
Image
To know oneself, one should assert oneself.
Albert Camus
Image
Obstinacy alone is not a virtue.
Albert Camus
Image
Happiness too is inevitable.
Albert Camus
Image
People don't love each other at our age, Marthe—they please each other, that's all. Later on, when you're old and impotent, you can love someone. At our age, you just think you do. That's all it is.
Albert Camus
Image
He had been bored, that's all, bored like most people. Hence he had made himself out of whole cloth a life full of complications and drama. Something must happen - and that explains most human commitments. Something must happen, even loveless slavery, even war or death. Hurray then for funerals!
Albert Camus
Image
I was tormented by my desire for a woman ... I thought so much about a woman, about women, about all the ones I had known, about all the circumstances in which I had enjoyed them, that my cell would be filled with their faces and crowded with my desires.
Albert Camus
Image
A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.
Albert Camus
Image
A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing.
Albert Camus