albert camus Quotes That Will Inspire You to Live Your Best Life

1. … I suppose that it is not so easy to go home and it takes a bit of time to make a son out of a stranger.

2. A man wants to earn money in order to be happy, and his whole effort and the best of a life are devoted to the earning of that money. Happiness is forgotten; the means are taken for the end. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

3. Against eternal injustice, man must assert justice, and to protest against the universe of grief, he must create happiness.

4. 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. La Peste | The Plague

5. Don't lies eventually lead to the truth? And don't all my stories, true or false, tend toward the same conclusion? Don't they all have the same meaning? So what does it matter whether they are true or false if, in both cases, they are significant of what I have been and what I am? Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar than into the man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object. The Fall

6. Every achievement is a servitude. It compels us to a higher achievement.

7. False judges are held up in the world’s admiration and I alone know the true ones. The Fall

8. Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable.

9. 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.

10. I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L'Illustration. Something desperate, you know. A Happy Death

11. 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. Notebooks 1951-1959

12. If something is going to happen to me, I want to be there. The Stranger

13. It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.

14. l'homme se trouve devant l'irrationnel. Il sent en lui son désir de bonheur et de raison. L'absurde naît de cette confrontation entre l'appel humain et le silence déraisonnable du monde. The Myth of Sisyphus

15. Lying is not only saying what isn't true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true, and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels.

16. Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

17. My dear,In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love.In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile.In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm.I realized, through it all, that…In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.Truly yours,I like this because only one part is usually quoted but the full quote has such symmetry.

18. Nothing in life is worth,turning your back on,if you love it.

19. Rebellion cannot exist without a strange form of love. The Rebel

20. Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

21. 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. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

22. There's the risk of being loved...and that would keep me from being happy. A Happy Death

23. They knew now that if there is one thing one can always yearn for, and sometimes attain, it is human love. La Peste | The Plague

24. What did it matter if he existed for two or for twenty years? Happiness was the fact that he had existed. A Happy Death

25. What I believe to be true I must therefore preserve. What seems to me so obvious, even against me, I must support. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

26. What made me run away was doubtless not so much the fear of settling down, but of settling down permanently in something ugly.

27. Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him?

28. Without desire, women bored me beyond all expectation, and obviously I bored them too. No more gambling and no more theater—I was probably in the realm of truth. But truth, cher ami, is a colossal bore. The Fall

29. You are forgiven for your happiness and your successes only if you generously consent to share them.

30. You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question. The Fall