We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death, the body maintains its irreparable lead.
For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium.
Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose further developments, a future – and also because we live as if our only task was precisely to have relationships with other people.
No code of ethics and no effort are justifiable a priori in the face of the cruel mathematics that command our condition.
Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.
What made me run away was doubtless not so much the fear of settling down, but of settling down permanently in something ugly.
Only a philosophy of eternity, in the world today, could justify non-violence.
A novel is never anything but a philosophy expressed in images. And in a good novel the philosophy has disappeared into the images.
Do you believe in God, doctor?No – but what does that really mean? I’m fumbling in the dark, struggling to make something out. But I’ve long ceased finding that original.
If I had to write a book on morality, it would have a hundred pages and ninety-nine would be blank. On the last page I should write: I recognize only one duty, and that is to love.
This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction. (…) Forever I shall be a stranger to myself.
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.
If there were a party of those who aren’t sure they’re right, I’d belong to it. (as quoted by Tony Judt)
Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.
The evil that is in the world almost always comes from ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.
Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep
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.
They knew now that if there is one thing one can always yearn for, and sometimes attain, it is human love.
I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L’Illustration. Something desperate, you know.
But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?
It is necessary to fall in love – the better to provide an alibi for all the despair we are going to feel anyway.
Sometimes at night I would sleep open-eyed underneath a sky dripping with stars. I was alive then.
Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
I would like to be able to breathe— to be able to love her by memory or fidelity. But my heart aches. I love you continuously, intensely.
And he knew, also, what the old man was thinking as his tears flowed, and he, Rieux, thought it too: that a loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one’s work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart.
I am not made for politics because I am incapable of wanting or accepting the death of the adversary.
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.
He knew now that it was his own will to happiness which must make the next move. But if he was to do so, he realized that he must come to terms with time, that to have time was at once the most magnificent and the most dangerous of experiments. Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.
Let’s not worry. It’s too late now. It will always be too late, fortunately!
I am strangely tired, not from having talked so much but at the mere thought of what I still have to say
Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.
Question: how can one manage not to lose time? Answer: experience it at its full length. Means: spend days in the dentist‘s waiting-room on an uncomfortable chair; live on one‘s balcony on a Sunday afternoon; listen to lectures in a language that one does not understand; choose the most roundabout and least convenient routes on the railway (and, naturally, travel standing up); queue at the box-office for theatres and so on and not take one‘s seat; etc.
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!
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.
O young girl, throw yourself again into the water so that I might have a second time the chance to save the two of us! A second time, eh, what imprudence! Suppose, dear sir, someone actually took our word for it? It would have to be fulfilled. Brr…! the water is so cold! But let’s reassure ourselves. It’s too late now, it will always be too late. Fortunately!
You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.
The absurd does not liberate; it binds. It does not authorize all actions. Everything is permitted does not mean that nothing is forbidden.
Because there is nothing here than invites us to cherish unhappy lovers. Nothing is more vain than to die for love. What we ought to do is live.
There will be no lasting peace either in the heart of individuals or in social customs until death is outlawed.
Mother used to say that however miserable one is, there’s always something to be thankful for. And each morning, when the sky brightened and light began to flood my cell, I agreed with her.
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest — whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories — comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer.
Remembrance of things past is just for the rich. For the poor it only marks the faint traces on the path to death.
Perhaps the easiest way of making a town’s acquaintance is to ascertain how the people in it work, how they love, and how they die.
An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. Can they be brought together? This is a practical question. We must get down to it. I despise intelligence really means: I cannot bear my doubts.
It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.
Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.