124 Albert Camus Quotes from When Humanity Lived a Pandemic
What does the book The Plague by the French author Albert Camus have to tell us today? Camus was an author, journalist, playwright, political activist and reluctant philosopher, born in Algiers on November 7, 1913. He was born into poverty: his father died from wounds sustained in World War I, and his mother was illiterate. Despite this difficult beginning, Camus worked hard and studied philosophy at the University of Algiers. Camus’s literary works include The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall, and The Rebel. These works were instrumental in the rise of “absurdism“: the philosophy that it is absurd to seek meaning in life when there is none. Ironically enough, after Camus receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957, he died in an absurd car accident on January 4, 1960, as his publisher’s car struck a tree while the author was in the passenger seat. In the wreckage was an unfinished manuscript entitled Le Premier Homme (The First Man). Camus based the manuscript on his childhood in Algeria, and he believed that it would be his best work.
Camus’s work is still relevant today. His work The Plague has been much in demand lately as humanity has tried to navigate the COVID pandemic. Albert Camus lived a remarkable life in his short 46 years, rising from poverty to political activism and worldwide fame. His words have made a difference in the world. Enjoy reading some of his quotes today and share them with others.
Table of Contents
- Best Albert Camus Quotes
- Albert Camus Quotes on Life
- Albert Camus Quotes About Beauty
- Albert Camus Quotes About Love
- “The Plague” Quotes by Albert Camus
- “The Stranger” Quotes by Albert Camus
- “The Fall” Quotes from Albert Camus’s book
- Albert Camus Absurdism Quotes
- Insightful Albert Camus Quotes
- Albert Camus Quotes On Images
Best Albert Camus Quotes
- To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others. Albert Camus
- Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present. Albert Camus, Notebooks 1935-1942
- Always go too far, because that’s where you’ll find the truth. Albert Camus
- Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend
Albert Camus - Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower. Albert Camus
- Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better. Albert Camus
- In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. Albert Camus
- Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is. Albert Camus
- Liberty is the right not to lie. Albert Camus
- Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity. Albert Camus
- Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken. Albert Camus
- If there were a party of those who aren’t sure they’re right, I’d belong to it. Albert Camus
- There is scarcely any passion without struggle. Albert Camus
- To create is to live twice. Albert Camus
- In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion. Albert Camus
- It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money. Albert Camus
- Do not wait for the last judgment. It comes every day. Albert Camus
- I rebel; therefore I exist. Albert Camus
- What is a rebel? A man who says no. Albert Camus
- Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre. Albert Camus
- The need to be right – the sign of a vulgar mind. Albert Camus
- But above all, in order to be, never try to seem. Albert Camus, Notebooks 1935-1951
- Art and revolt will die only with the last man. Albert Camus
- For ever, I shall be a stranger to myself. Albert Camus
- A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession. Albert Camus
- You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question. Albert Camus, The Fall
- The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. Albert Camus
- You can’t create experience, you undergo it. Albert Camus
- We are all special cases. Albert Camus
- Peace is the only battle worth waging. Albert Camus
- Integrity has no need of rules. Albert Camus
- When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune. Albert Camus, The First Man
- Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it. Albert Camus
- A man devoid of hope and conscious of being so has ceased to belong to the future. Albert Camus
- Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them. Albert Camus
- Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid. Albert Camus
- It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners. Albert Camus
- A true masterpiece does not tell everything. Albert Camus
- The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself. Albert Camus
- Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth. Albert Camus
- I don’t want to be a genius-I have enough problems just trying to be a man. Albert Camus
- Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it. Albert Camus
- There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night. Albert Camus
- I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice. Albert Camus
- There are more things to admire in men then to despise. Albert Camus, The Plague
- … We need the sweet pain of anticipation to tell us we are really alive. Albert Camus
- He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool. Albert Camus
- But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads? Albert Camus
- We must learn how to lend ourselves to dreaming when dreams lend themselves to us. Albert Camus
- We are all born mad, some remain so. Albert Camus
- To feel absolutely right is the beginning of the end. Albert Camus
- I had the whole sky in my eyes and it was blue and gold. Albert Camus
Albert Camus Quotes on Life
- Live to the point of tears. Albert Camus
- 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. Albert Camus
- Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. Albert Camus
- There is not love of life without despair about life. Albert Camus
- But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself. Albert Camus
- When I look at my life and its secret colours, I feel like bursting into tears. Albert Camus, A Happy Death
- Without work, all life goes rotten, but when work is soulless, life stifles and dies. Albert Camus
- Nothing in life is worth, turning your back on, if you love it. Albert Camus
- If we believe in nothing, if nothing has any meaning and if we can affirm no values whatsoever, then everything is possible and nothing has any importance. Albert Camus, The Rebel
- For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life. Albert Camus, Summer in Algiers
- We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
- At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures – be what he is. And, above all, accept these things. Albert Camus
- All men have a sweetness in their life. That is what helps them go on. It is towards that they turn when they feel too worn out. Albert Camus
Albert Camus Quotes About Beauty
- Man cannot do without beauty, and this is what our era pretends to want to disregard. Albert Camus
- At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman. Albert Camus
- Beauty, no doubt, does not make revolutions. But a day will come when revolutions will have need of beauty. Albert Camus, The Rebel
- 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. Albert Camus, Notebooks 1935-1942
- There is a life and there is a death, and there are beauty and melancholy between. Albert Camus, Notebooks 1935-1942
- Life can be magnificent and overwhelming — that is the whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would almost be easy to live. Albert Camus
- Alas, after a certain age every man is responsible for his face. Albert Camus, The Fall
Albert Camus Quotes About Love
- My chief occupation, despite appearances, has always been love. Albert Camus
- Nothing in the world is worth turning one’s back on what one loves. Albert Camus, The Plague
- 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. Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959
- He discovered the cruel paradox by which we always decieve ourselves twice about the people we love-first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage. Albert Camus, A Happy Death
- For there is merely bad luck in not being loved; there is misfortune in not loving. Albert Camus
- If those whom we begin to love could know us as we were before meeting them … they could perceive what they have made of us. Albert Camus, Notebooks, 1935-1951
“The Plague” Quotes by Albert Camus
Camus used as source material the cholera epidemic that killed a large part of the French-Algerian city of Oran’s population in 1849, but the novel’s plot takes place in the 1940s.
- I have no idea what’s awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing. The Plague
- I know that man is capable of great deeds. But if he isn’t capable of great emotion, well, he leaves me cold. Albert Camus, The Plague
- The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits. Albert Camus, The Plague
- All I can say is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims– and as far as possible one must refuse to be on the side of the pestilence. Albert Camus, The Plague
- “Who taught you all this, doctor?”
The reply came promptly:
“Suffering.”
Αlbert Camus - But, you know, I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don’t really appeal to me, I imagine. What interests me is being a man. Albert Camus, The Plague
- It is in the thick of calamity that one gets hardened to the truth – in other words, to silence. Albert Camus, The Plague
- There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise. Albert Camus, The Plague
- What’s true of all the evils in the world is true of plague as well. It helps men to rise above themselves. Albert Camus, The Plague
- They knew now that if there is one thing one can always yearn for, and sometimes attain, it is human love. Albert Camus, The Plague
- Well, personally, I’ve seen enough of people who die for an idea. I don’t believe in heroism; I know it’s easy and I’ve learned that it can be murderous. What interests me is living and dying for what one loves. Albert Camus, The Plague
“The Stranger” Quotes by Albert Camus
Camus summarized this novel with a highly paradoxical remark: “In our society any man who does not weep at his mother’s funeral runs the risk of being sentenced to death.”
- I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn’t. Albert Camus, The Stranger
- I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Albert Camus, The Stranger
- I had only a little time left and I didn’t want to waste it on God. , The Stranger
- Since we’re all going to die, it’s obvious that when and how don’t matter. Albert Camus, The Stranger
- After awhile you could get used to anything. Albert Camus, The Stranger
- I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world. Albert Camus, The Stranger
- I realized then that a man who had lived only one day could easily live for a hundred years in prison. He would have enough memories to keep him from being bored. Albert Camus, The Stranger
- If something is going to happen to me, I want to be there. Albert Camus, The Stranger
“The Fall” Quotes from Albert Camus’s book
The Fall explores themes of innocence, imprisonment, non-existence, and truth through a series of dramatic monologues by the self-proclaimed “judge-penitent” Jean-Baptiste Clamence.
- People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves. Albert Camus, The Fall
- I used to advertise my loyalty and I don’t believe there is a single person I loved that I didn’t eventually betray. Albert Camus, The Fall
- Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death. So long as you are alive, your case is doubtful; you have a right only to their skepticism. Albert Camus, The Fall
- I love life – that’s my real weakness. I love it so much that I am incapable of imagining what is not life. Albert Camus, The Fall
- Your success and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them. But to be happy it is essential not to be too concerned with others. Consequently, there is no escape. Happy and judged, or absolved and wretched. Albert Camus, The Fall
- I like people who dream or talk to themselves interminably; I like them, for they are double. They are here and elsewhere. Albert Camus, The Fall
- I have a very old and very faithful attachment for dogs. I like them because they always forgive. Albert Camus, The Fall
- Empires and churches are born under the sun of death. Albert Camus, The Fall
- How could sincerity be a condition of friendship? A liking for the truth at all costs is a passion that spares nothing and that nothing can withstand. Albert Camus, The Fall
Albert Camus Absurdism Quotes
Instead of seeking meaning in life, Camus proposed that acceptance of the world’s meaninglessness brings freedom and enables man to create his own meaning.
- Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. Albert Camus
- At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face. Albert Camus
- Humans are creatures, who spent their lifes trying to convince themselves, that their existence is not absurd. Albert Camus
- Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee? Albert Camus
- The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth. Albert Camus
- Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
- I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. Albert Camus
- The final conclusion of the absurdist protest is, in fact, the rejection of suicide and persistence in that hopeless encounter between human questioning and the silence of the universe. Albert Camus, The Rebel
Insightful Albert Camus Quotes
- I’m going to tell you something: thoughts are never honest. Emotions are. Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959
- Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being. Albert Camus, The Rebel
- Those who prefer their principles over their happiness, they refuse to be happy outside the conditions they seem to have attached to their happiness. Albert Camus, Notebooks, 1935-1951
- 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.” Albert Camus
- I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist. Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959
- A man is more a man through the things he keeps to himself than through those he says. Albert Camus
- Always there comes an hour when one is weary of one’s work and devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart. Albert Camus
- There are crimes of passion and crimes of logic. The boundary between them is not clearly defined. Albert Camus
- After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books. Albert Camus
- Happiness implied a choice, and within that choice a concerted will, a lucid desire. Only it takes time to be happy. A lot of time. Happiness, too, is a long patience. Albert Camus
Albert Camus Quotes On Images
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