Camus quotes are well known to all literature connoisseurs. After all, this is one of the most famous writers of the 20th century, the winner of the 1957 Nobel Prize. He is considered one of the most striking representatives of the current of existentialism in philosophy and literature.
Writer Biography
Vivid quotes Camus can be found in almost any of his work. The writer was born in Algeria in 1913, then it was still a French colony. His father died in the First World War, and his mother, who could not read and was half-deaf, moved to Bellecour, where they began to live under the control of a masterful grandmother.
Albert graduated with honors from elementary school, at this stage many of his peers stopped receiving education and went to work to help families. But his teacher convinced his relatives that Alber must continue to study. He prepared him for admission to the Lyceum and knocked out a scholarship for him.
Camus was forced to interrupt his education in 1930, when he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He was treated for a long time, for this reason he did not get into the army. In the 1930s, he graduated from the University of Algeria, where he studied philosophy.
In 1934, he marries the young and extravagant 19-year-old Simone Iye, who turns out to be a morphist. After 5 years, they break up. Towards the end of his studies, he is fond of socialist ideas, joins the Communist Party, but then he is expelled, accused of Trotskyism.
After graduation, he leads the Algerian House of Culture, then begins working in the magazine Coast, opposition newspapers that hold leftist radical views. On their pages he advocates a socially oriented policy, improving the situation of the Arab inhabitants of Algeria. After the outbreak of World War II, censorship forbids the publication of these newspapers.
Relocation to France
In 1940, Camus moved to Paris with his future wife, Francine Faure, who was a mathematician by education. Here he gives private lessons, works in the newspaper Paris-Suar. When France is in occupation, he is fired for opposition views, and he returns to Oran, where he begins to teach at a private school.
During the war, the writer still can not stay away from the events and joins the Resistance, he becomes one of the members of a secret underground organization called "Komba", publishes the newspaper of the same name.
After the war, his works begin to be actively published; popularity comes to him. In 1947, he breaks up with Sartre and the left movement, becoming an independent journalist.
In 1957, Camus received the Nobel Prize for Literature with the wording "for the knowledge of human conscience." In his Nobel lecture, he substantiated in detail his life position, this quote Camus immediately became famous. In particular, he stated that:
Too tightly chained to the galley of his time, so as not to row with others, even believing that the galley smelled of herring, that there were too many overseers and that, besides everything, the wrong course was taken
Death Camus
Camus died in a car accident. On January 4, 1960, the car in which he was driving with the family of his friend Gallimard, flew off the track and crashed into a plane tree. The accident occurred near the town of Villeven, about a hundred kilometers from the French capital. The death of the writer came instantly. He was 46 years old.
Gallimar was driving and died in the hospital two days later, his wife and daughter survived.
Camus was buried in the south of France in the Luberon area.
Already in 2011, Italian journalists put forward the version that the car accident was rigged by the Soviet secret services. Allegedly, this was a sophisticated revenge for condemning the Soviet invasion of Hungary and supporting Boris Pasternak. However, most researchers, including biographer Camus Michelle Honfre, called this version a fictional insinuation.
Philosophical views
Camus did not consider himself an existentialist, but this trend had a serious impact on him. In addition, the serious illness from which he suffered most of his life created a constant feeling of near death, so close to existentialists.
Formulating his views, Camus argued that the only way to fight against the absurd is to recognize it as a given. In his famous essay, "The Myth of Sisyphus," Camus wrote that to understand the reasons that make a person engage in meaningless work, you need to imagine Sisyphus, who finds true satisfaction, even recognizing the futility and futility of all his efforts.
The same essay contains the famous Camus quote on the inevitability of death.
Inevitably, only one thing - death, everything else can be avoided. In the temporary space that separates birth from death, there is nothing predetermined: everything can be changed and you can even stop the war and live in peace, if you want it like that, it’s very strong and long.
According to Camus, the highest degree of absurdity is attempts to forcibly improve the state of society. He cited Stalinism, fascism and other similar totalitarian and dictatorial regimes as examples.
By nature, he was a humanist, and therefore did not recognize violence in any way. Camus believed that confronting injustice and violence “by their own methods” could only give rise to even greater injustice and even greater violence. In the essay "Rebel Man," he distinguished two forms of rebellion. The first was expressed directly in revolutionary activity, and the second in creativity, it was he who preferred it. At the end of the essay, he derived his formula, paraphrasing Descartes's statement:
I rebel, therefore, we exist.
Quotes about love
Camus left a large number of statements on a variety of topics. Alber Camus quotes about love are now very popular. He originally spoke out about the connection between love and religion, arguing that it was man who allowed God to love himself.
Love is, it seems, the only thing that suited us in God, because we are always not averse to being loved by someone against our will.
If you believe the hero of our article, a person suffers from vanity, if he deceives himself and others, striving for love, and telling everyone that he wants to achieve the truth. To many, this quote about Camus' love seems especially accurate.
It is amazing how conceited a man is who wants to impress upon himself and others that he strives for truth, while he longs for love.
According to him, love is a fleeting state on which it is impossible, and it will not work to build anything. For this, besides love, there must be other good reasons.
Nothing can be built on love: it is flight, pain, moments of delight or a rapid fall.
The famous statement by Albert Camus about love in the original language is as follows:
Ne marche pas devant moi, je ne suivrai peut-etre pas. Ne marche pas derriere moi, je ne te guiderai peut-etre pas. Marche juste a cote de moi et sois mon ami.
Translated from French, this means:
Do not go ahead of me - I may not be in time. Do not go behind me - I can lead you in the wrong place. Just walk by my side and be my friend.
"Notebooks"
In addition to fiction and journalistic essays, Camus left a large number of notebooks, which after his death began to be published separately. There you can find a lot of wise and fresh thoughts.
To understand the quotes and statements of Albert Camus, it is necessary to get a grasp of their essence, only in this way it will be possible to understand what the author really meant. From them you can understand how the writer perceived the surrounding reality. For example, in 1935 he spoke extremely sharply about public policy.
Every time I hear or read the speeches of our politicians, I am horrified to find that they do not have a single human word. Forever the same phrases repeating the same lie. And if people get used to it, if people haven’t yet torn puppets, this, in my opinion, proves only one thing: people don’t put their government down and turn into a game - yes, it’s a game - a considerable part of their life and their so-called vital interests.
In quotes from the Notebooks of Albert Camus, one can often find the bitterness with which he discusses the short and short memory of the people, how quickly the heroes and what they accomplished are forgotten.
All zealously performed their duty, and today on the plates, designed to perpetuate their excellence, children play leapfrog.
In the meaning of quotes and aphorisms Camus often helps to understand the knowledge of what time and in what circumstances they were pronounced. So, in an article on football, which he wrote for the Bulletin of the University of Algeria, he concludes:
After many years during which I have seen a lot, I owe everything to everything that I firmly know about morality and human duty.
From these quotes and aphorisms Camus, we can conclude about his personality. For example, the last statement is often interpreted as a reference to classical moral values - courage, loyalty to one's team, fair play. Thus, the writer contrasts clear and understandable principles with those ideas that religion and society offer. This is a clear example of a clear and moral guideline that Camus followed in his life.
"Outsider"
A large number of quotes by Albert Camus in French and other languages became known thanks to his works. In 1942, he wrote the novel The Outsider.
It is narrated on behalf of a 30-year-old Frenchman who, like the author, lives in colonial Algeria. Merceau describes three key events in his life that pass before the reader's eyes - this is the death of his mother, the murder of an Algerian on the beach and the trial of the main character. A fleeting and brief relationship with the girl is also mentioned.
Much attention in the story is given to the trial, during which Merceau admits that he shot Algerian “from behind the sun”, which causes only jokes among the jury and in the courtroom. But the judges are very impressed by the fact that the hero did not utter a tear at his mother’s funeral, which means that he can be described as a cruel person who is not worthy of life. He is sentenced to death. In the last chapter, a priest comes to Merso’s cell, trying to awaken faith in God in him, but he refuses the illusions of the afterlife, for the first time in the whole story he gets out of a drowsy state, falling into violent fury.
Quotes from the “Outsider” Camus help us better understand the main character, his thoughts, actions. After all, despite his indifference to others, even to relatives and friends, he remains the most honest person, never tries to pretend when the surrounding society makes him feel that he really doesn’t, like at his mother’s funeral, when he doesn’t cry, because long ago reconciled with her death and separation. This feature of the protagonist is characterized by the story that he finds on a piece of newspaper.
Once I found on a bunk under a straw mattress a piece of an old newspaper adhering to it - yellowed, almost transparent. It was a piece of the criminal chronicle, the beginning was not enough, but, apparently, the case took place in Czechoslovakia. A man set off from his native village to distant lands to try his luck. Twenty-five years later, having become rich, he returned to his homeland with his wife and child. His mother and sister kept a small village hotel. He decided to surprise them, left his wife and child somewhere else, came to his mother - and she did not recognize him. For fun, he pretended to need a room. Mother and sister saw that he had a lot of money. They killed him with a hammer, robbed him, and threw the corpse into the river. The next morning his wife appeared and, unsuspecting, revealed who was the newcomer. Mother hanged herself. Sister rushed into the well. I reread this story probably a thousand times. On the one hand, she was implausible. On the other, it’s quite natural. In my opinion, this man to some extent deserved his fate. You never have to pretend.
In the story "Outsider" by Albert Camus, quotes from which are given in this article, you can find many thoughts that allow you to better understand the ideas of the author.
Do not wait for the Last Judgment. It happens every day.
Lying is something we all resort to daily in order to make our lives easier.
In fact, there is no such thought that a person cannot get used to.
"Plague"
In 1947, Camus wrote his most famous novel, The Plague, for which he basically received the Nobel Prize in literature ten years later. The novel tells about the situation in the city of Oran in Algeria, plagued by plague. A terrible epidemic is pushing residents into the abyss of death and suffering.
The narrator is Dr. Rie, who in his life is accustomed to accepting facts only. He seeks to accurately depict current events without being carried away by artistic features. Rie to the last strives to fulfill his duty as a doctor, helping patients even at the cost of his own life. He is fighting a specific disease and evil in the world in general. Around him there are many people who perceive evil in a different way. For example, Tarru believes that evil is a concept inseparable from a person, therefore any, even a healthy person, carries a disease in his heart.
According to Camus, good, honest and discovery people are able to defeat a specific evil, but they cannot destroy it as a certain category that exists in the universe. Because of this, in the very finale of the novel, when the townspeople are celebrating their liberation from a terrible disease that receded from the city, when no one was counting on it, Rie was not in a hurry to rejoice. He is convinced that this is only temporary joy.
... Perhaps the day will come when the plague will wake the rats on the mountain and send them to die on the streets of a happy city.
With such thoughts, the doctor looks at the jubilant crowd.
What is the novel "Plague" about?
As the author himself admitted, “Plague” tells in allegorical form the story of European resistance against the “brown plague” - fascism. Naturally, the content of the work is not limited to this layer.
Camus sought to extend the image of the plague as a whole to being. Arguing that the plague in his novel is not only fascism, but in general evil, which is peculiar to being and is never inseparable from it. The plague should be understood by the reader as a form of the existence of evil in this world, at the same time becoming a tragic fate that can reduce the author’s transition from a lonely rebellion to a community, whose struggle must be divided and supported, evolution must take place towards solidarity and sympathy.
The novel is written in the genre of the chronicle, which allows you to emphasize objectively select vocabulary, limit yourself to vivid and emotional statements, the presentation of events is presented as discreetly as possible, there are practically no author's comments on them. The reader is predominantly dry facts.
Of course, this is also a parable novel, the meaning of which is much deeper than it might seem at first glance. It guesses the timeless and universal implication. In a philosophical sense, one can even afford to consider it as a kind of author’s monologue, during which individual characters reproduce all kinds of versions of the writer’s worldview. If you approach the work in this sense, then it is simultaneously a conversation with oneself, which at the same time does not deprive key characters of bright individual traits, and you can also follow the motivation that they do.
The style of the novel emphasizes the development of the creative manner of Camus himself. He seeks to abide by the traditions of the genre common in modern intellectual prose, trying to maintain the universality of content. The novel “Plague” is an allegory that many compare with the “Bible” or ancient myths, but unlike the parables of past centuries, which mainly gravitated to straightforward and very unambiguous allegories, in Camus’s work one can find semantic ambiguity. In this case, the novel becomes already a supercultural phenomenon, which can be put on a par with Andrei Platonov's Pit, Franz Kafka's Process, Moby Dick by Herman Melville.
At the same time, “Plague” is a warning novel and a warning novel, which is trying to protect humanity from inevitable evil.
The quotes from Camus's Plague are clear illustrations of these ideas.
The most terrible vice is ignorance, believing that he knows everything.
The habit of despair is far worse than despair itself.
The most convenient way to get to know the city is to try to find out how they work here, how they love here and how they die here.
When a war breaks out, people usually say: "Well, it can't last long, it's too stupid." Indeed, war is indeed too stupid, which, however, does not prevent it from lasting for a long time.
A person cannot truly share someone else's grief that he does not see with his own eyes.
I am ashamed to be happy alone.
"A fall"
In 1956, Camus novel "The Fall" was published. In it, he addresses important topics of guilt, innocence, the meaninglessness of human existence and freedom. Camus is trying to assert that the main and primary goal of human existence is to bring the reader and any person to the realization that life is sheer absurdity.
Interestingly, the style in which this work is written is reminiscent of "Notes from the Underground" by Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. Camus uses the same technique as the classic of Russian literature, it is a stream of consciousness.
Many contemporaries praised this creation of a prose writer. For example, his colleague Jean-Paul Sartre claimed that this is the least understood, but at the same time the most beautiful work of Camus. "Fall" Sartre dedicated a separate eulogy.
At the center of the story in this book is an ordinary lawyer named Jean-Baptiste Clamans. He recently resigned when he had his own practice, he specialized in protecting the most disadvantaged - widows and orphans. Now he lives in Amsterdam, regularly visits the local bar, Mexico City.
Clamans is convinced that all Europeans are occupied with only one thing: satisfying their own needs, as well as seeking pleasure, he accurately and succinctly describes what is happening around, saying that "all of Europe is fornication." That is how he characterizes all, without exception, modern people who surround him.
Clamance devotes most of his time to exposing social vices. He does not forget to himself, considering rich people who live in prosperity, like himself, but at the same time never help the poor, Sadducees. He himself believes that he has changed lately, noting that in human society greed has replaced ambition, it was always funny to him.
Clamance is preoccupied with self-digging, reflection, and self-denunciation, and does so with a certain amount of humor and self-irony, not forgetting about boasting. He defines his role in society as a person who inspires confidence in the people around him, all thanks to a sincere and pleasant laugh and an energetic open handshake. All this is the main character of the story Camus considers trump cards.
The idea of the protagonist begins to change when every day he more and more clearly begins to understand that he actually turned out to be on the side of the criminals. The people he is trying to protect are the notorious villains whom he considers innocent. Clamance understands that if he now admits, if only for himself, their guilt, then he will have to immediately rank himself as a criminal community.
Everything changes for the main character when he passes by a drowning woman, pretending to be around and that he sees nothing and does not hear. But he used to consider himself a respected person, he, as an authoritative and well-known lawyer in society, was even awarded the Legion of Honor. The whole story actually turns out to be public repentance, a confession conducted by the protagonist. Clamance himself initially defines himself with the help of the capacious, but not very widespread concept of “judge on repentance”.
The Fall was one of Camu’s most visible and famous works after the publication of the novel Plague. He failed to complete any major work. The unfinished novel "The First Man" was published in 1994. One more story of the author was posthumously published - "Happy death".
Really, our beloved has something in common with Bonaparte: they always think to win where everyone has failed.
Sometimes I think, and what will the future historian say about us? To characterize the modern man, one phrase will suffice for him: "He has fornication and read newspapers." With this brief definition, the subject, I dare say, will be exhausted.
So the man is tailored, my dear, this is a two-faced creature: he cannot love without loving himself.
Sometimes you’ll understand more clearly the person who is lying than the one who is telling the truth. True, like a bright light, it dazzles. Lies, on the contrary, are a slight twilight that sets off every thing.
With age, everyone acquires the appearance that he deserves.
The quotes from Camus' Fall, cited above, clearly illustrate what the author wanted to convey to the reader in a story written just a few years before his death.