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Absolute virtue is impossible and the republic of forgiveness leads, with implacable logic, to the republic of the guillotine.

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
Absolutes
Absolute
Leads
Logic
Virtue
Implacable
Impossible
Guillotine
Republic
Forgiveness

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And then came human beings humans wanted to cling but there was nothing to cling to.
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Whoever today speaks of human existence in terms of power, efficiency, and historical tasks is an actual or potential assassin.
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You must have a love, a great love, to ensure an alibi at unjustified despairs that conquer all of us
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Only he who is uncompromising as to his rights maintains the sense of duty.
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What did it matter if he existed for two or for twenty years? Happiness was the fact that he had existed.
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What is a rebel? A man who says no.
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Gilbert Jonas, painter, believed in his star.... His own faith was not, however, without its virtues because it consisted in admitting, in some obscure way, that he would obtain many things without deserving them.
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Those who write clearly have readers.
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Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself.
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God is not necessary to create culpability, or to punish. Our fellow men are enough for that, helped by ourselves.
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You know, a man always judges himself by the balance he can strike between the needs of his body and the demands of his mind. You're judging yourself now, Mersaut, and you don't like the sentence.
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In normal times all of us know, whether consciously or not, that there is no love which can't be bettered nevertheless, we reconcile ourselves more or less easily to the fact that ours has never risen above the average.
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One might think, that a period which, within fifty years, uproots, enslaves or kills seventy million human beings, should only, and forthwith, be condemned. But also its guilt must be understood.
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I enjoyed my own nature to the fullest, and we all know there lies happiness, although, to soothe one another mutually, we occasionally pretend to condemn such joys as selfishness.
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It is normal to give away a little of one's life in order not to lose it all.
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I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L'Illustration. Something desperate, you know.
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Thinking is learning all over again how to see, directing one's consciousness, making of every image a privileged place.
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If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be the history of its successive regrets and its impotences.
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