Quote

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion in order to serve others better, one has to hold them at a distance for a time. But where can one find the solitude necessary to vigor, the deep breath in which the mind collects itself and courage gauges its strength? There remain big cities.

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
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Drean
Camus
World
Understand
Deep
Occasions
Away
Courage
Breath
Others
Strength
Breaths
Order
Hold
Solitude
Better
Cities
Serve
Collects
Find
Turn
Remain
Gauges
Mind
Turns
Distance
Vigor
Time
Bigs
Necessary
Occasion

More quotes by Albert Camus

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The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism.
Albert Camus
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To govern means to pillage, as everyone knows.
Albert Camus
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With rebellion, awareness is born
Albert Camus
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To correct a natural indifference I was placed half-way between misery and the sun. Misery kept me from believing that all was well under the sun, and the sun taught me that history wasn't everything.
Albert Camus
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They hurt each other without wanting to, just because each represented to the others the cruel and demanding necessity of their lives.
Albert Camus
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Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined. Society has but little connection with such beginnings. The worm is in man's heart. That is where it must be sought. One must follow and understand this fatal game that leads from lucidity in the face of existence to flight from light.
Albert Camus
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And I too, felt ready to start life all over again. It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.
Albert Camus
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All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant's revolving door.
Albert Camus
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What's natural is the microbe. All the rest-heath, integrity, purity (if you like)-is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never falter. The good man, the man who infects hardly anyone, is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention.
Albert Camus
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It is normal to give away a little of one's life in order not to lose it all.
Albert Camus
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Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.
Albert Camus
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O light! This the cry of all the characters of ancient drama brought face to face with their fate. This last resort was ours, too, and I knew it now. In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.
Albert Camus
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maybe she had become tired of being the girlfriend of a condemned man. It also occured to me that maybe she was sick, or dead. These things happen. [...] Anyway, after that, remembering Marie meant nothing to me. That seemed perfectly normal to me, since I understood very well that people would forget me when I was dead.
Albert Camus
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At a certain level of suffering or injustice no one can do anything for anyone. Pain is solitary.
Albert Camus
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Holland is a dream, Monsieur, a dream of gold and smoke-smokier by day, more gilded by night. And night and day that dream is peopled with Lohengrins like these, dreamily riding their black bicycles with high handle-bars, funereal swans constantly drifting throughout the whole country, around the seas, along the canals.
Albert Camus
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The look of success, when it is worn a certain way, would infuriate a jackass.
Albert Camus
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When the throne of God is overturned, the rebel realizes that it is now his own responsibility to create the justice, order, and unity that he sought in vain within his own condition, and in this way to justify the fall of God. Then begins the desperate effort to create, at the price of crime and murder if necessary, the dominion of man.
Albert Camus
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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
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It's not the struggle that makes us artists, but Art that makes us struggle.
Albert Camus
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No longer were there individual destinies only a collective destiny, made of plague and emotions shared by all.
Albert Camus