camus

What gives value to travel is fear. It is the fact that, at a certain moment, when we are so far from our own country _ we are seized by a vague fear, and an instinctive desire to go back to the protection of old habits _ this is why we should not say that we travel for pleasure. There is no pleasure in traveling, and I look upon it more as an occasion for spiritual testing _ Pleasure takes us away from ourselves in the same way as distraction, in Pascal__ use of the word, takes us away from God. Travel, which is like a greater and a graver science, brings us back to ourselves.

Any country where I am not bored is a country that teaches me nothing.

I hope the dogs don't bark tonight. I always think it's mine

Camus and Henry waved to me from that muddy truck. They both wanted me to get over myself.So, this was me, getting over myself. And it was about time.

I felt as though I was partly unlearning what i had never learned and yet knew so well: I mean, how to live.

I simply took refuge among women. As you know, they don't really condemn any weakness; they would be more inclined to try to humiliate or disarm our strength. This is why woman is the reward, not of the warrior, but of the criminal. She is his harbor, his haven; it is in a woman's bed that he is generally arrested. Is she not all that remains to us of earthly paradise?

What we call fundamental truths are simply the ones we discover after all the others.

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.

I sometimes try to imagine what future historians will say about us. They'll be able to sum up modern man in a single sentence: he fornicated and read the papers. After that robust description, I should guess there will be no more to say on the subject.

And thus to my final and most melancholy point: a great number of Stalin's enforcers and henchmen in Eastern Europe were Jews. And not just a great number, but a great proportion. The proportion was especially high in the secret police and 'security' departments, where no doubt revenge played its own part, as did the ideological attachment to Communism that was so strong among internationally minded Jews at that period: Jews like David Szmulevski. There were reasonably strong indigenous Communist forces in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, but in Hungary and Poland the Communists were a small minority and knew it, were dependent on the Red Army and aware of the fact, and were disproportionately Jewish and widely detested for that reason. Many of the penal labor camps constructed by the Nazis were later used as holding pens for German deportees by the Communists, and some of those who ran these grim places were Jewish. Nobody from Israel or the diaspora who goes to the East of Europe on a family-history fishing-trip should be unaware of the chance that they will find out both much less and much more than the package-tour had promised them. It's easy to say, with Albert Camus, 'neither victims nor executioners.' But real history is more pitiless even than you had been told it was.

If there were a party of those who aren't sure they're right, I'd belong to it.

My soul__ a burden to me, I__e had enough of it. I__ eager to be in that country, where the sun kills every question. I don__ belong here.

One plays at being immortal and after a few weeks one doesn't even know whether or not one can hang on till the next day.

The Myth of Sisyphus makes us wonder if we too are like the ones who are so distracted making friends with important people, staying on top of the latest technology, getting good marks in school, and making lots of money, that we never pause to think: What are we actually living for? Sisyphus ended up opening his heart to questions of meaning, value and purpose. He himself decided it was best to just make the most of his short time on earth, however meaningless it all may be. Through Sisyphus, Camus is telling us that life is a joke, and the courageous ones will accept that and have a laugh along the way. I know many movies released these days that operate under the same premise.

The spirit of rebellion can only exist in a society where a theoretical equality conceals great factual inequalities. The problem of rebellion, therefore, has no meaning except within our own Western society.

You are only excused for happiness and success if you generously agree to share them. But if one is to be happy, one should not worry too much about other people - which means there is no way out. Happy and judged or absolved and miserable.

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. ButSisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He tooconcludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neithersterile 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'sheart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy

As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself__o like a brother, really__ felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.