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There exists an obvious fact that seems utterly moral: namely, that a man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them. One has to pay something. A man who has become conscious of the absurd is forever bound to it.

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
Fact
Exists
Admitted
Facts
Obvious
Namely
Cannot
Atheism
Prey
Become
Conscious
Utterly
Seems
Pay
Truths
Something
Forever
Bound
Always
Moral
Absurd
Men
Free
Bounds

More quotes by Albert Camus

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At the age of 40, having ordered meat very rare in restaurants all his life, he realized he actually liked it medium and not at all rare.
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You have so much inside you, and the noblest happiness of all. Don’t just wait for a man to come along. That’s the mistake so many women make. Find your happiness in yourself.
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Do not wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.
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In our wildest aberrations we dream of an equilibrium we have left behind and which we naively expect to find at the end of our errors. Childish presumption which justifies the fact that child-nations, inheriting our follies, are now directing our history.
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The human heart has a tiresome tendency to label as fate only what crushes it. But happiness likewise, in its way, is without reason, since it is inevitable.
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Rebellion cannot exist without the feeling that somewhere, in some way, you are justified.
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The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning.
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Over there, in Europe, all was shame and anger. Here it was exile or solitude, among these languid and agitated madmen who danced in order to die.
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Don't wait for the last judgment - it takes place every day.
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Indeed, men never know how to love. nothing satisfies them. All they know is to dream, to imagine new duties, to look for new countries and new homes. While we women, we know that we must hasten to love, to share the same bed, hold hands, and fear absence. When we women love, we dream of nothing.
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We are living in the era of premeditation and the perfect crime. Our criminals are no longer helpless children who could plead love as their excuse. On the contrary, they are adults and the have the perfect alibi: philosophy, which can be used for any purpose - even for transforming murderers into judges.
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For me, physical love has always been bound to an irresistible feeling of innocence and joy. Thus, I cannot love in tears but in exaltation.
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It was in Spain that [my generation] learned that one can be right and yet be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, that there are times when courage is not its own recompense. It is this, doubtless, which explains why so many, the world over, feel the Spanish drama as a personal tragedy.
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But all the long speeches, all the interminable days and hours that people had spent talking about my soul, had left me with the impression of a colorless swirling river that was making me dizzy.
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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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You must have a love, a great love, to ensure an alibi at unjustified despairs that conquer all of us
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Working conditions for me have always been those of the monastic life: solitude and frugality. Except for frugality, they are contrary to my nature, so much so that work is a violence I do to myself.
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Freedom is not a gift received from the State or leader, but a possession to be won every day by the effort of each and the union of all.
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The absurd is a shadow cast over everything we do and even if we try to live life as if it has meaning as if there are reasons for doing things the absurd will linger in the back of our minds as a nagging doubt that perhaps there is no point.
Albert Camus
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The important thing isn't the soundness or otherwise of the argument, but for it to make you think.
Albert Camus