"Sometimes at night I would sleep open-eyed underneath a sky dripping with stars. I was alive then."

"Thinking of the future, establishing aims for oneself, having preferences-all this presupposes a belief in freedom, even if one occasionally ascertains that one doesn't feel it."

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

"Just as there is a moment when the artist must stop, when the sculpture must be left as it is, the painting untouched-just as a determination not to know serves the maker more than all the resources of clairvoyance-so there must be a minimum of ignorance in order to perfect a life in happiness. Thosewho lack such a thing must set about acquiring it: unintelligence must be earned."

"And indeed it could be said that once the faintest stirring of hope became possible, the dominion of plague was ended."

"What the world requires of the Christians is that they should continue to be Christians."

"How many crimes have been committed for no other reason than that the perpetrator could not bear being in the wrong!"

"Having been, not only mutilated in our country, wounded in our very flesh, but also divested of our most beautiful images, for you gave the world a hateful and ridiculous version of them. The most painful thing to bear is seeing a mockery made of what one loves."

"The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown. He must dominate in his turn."

"From the moment that man believes neither in God nor in immortal life, he becomes 'responsible for everything alive, for everything that, born of suffering, is condemned to suffer from life.' It is he, and he alone, who must discover law and order. Then the time of exile begins, the endless search for justification, the aimless nostalgia, 'the most painful, the most heartbreaking question, that of the heart which asks itself: where can I feel at home?"

"It is better to burn than to disappear."

"An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself."

"There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night."

"I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice."

"From the moment that man submits God to moral judgment, he kills Him his own heart."

"There is something divine in mindless beauty, and Mersault was particularly responsive to it."

"The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."

"The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding."

"In vain a zealous evangelist with a fely hat and flowing tie threads his way through the crowd, crying without cease: 'God is great and good. Come unto Him.' On the contrary, they all make haste toward some trivial objective that seems of more immediate interest than God."

"To stay or to go, it amounted to the same thing."

"The tragedy is not that we are alone, but that we cannot be. At times I would give anything in the world to no longer be connected by anything to this universe of men."

"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."

"Live to the point of tears."

"I know of only one duty, and that is to love."

"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!"

"To cut short the question of the law of retaliation, we must note that even in its primitive form it can operate only between two individuals of whom one is absolutely innocent, and the other absolutely guilty. The victim, to be sure, is innocent. But can the society that is supposed to represent the victim lay claim to innocence?"

"Your successes and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them."

"You have to be very rich or very poor to live without a trade."

"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-so like a brother really-I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again."

"Now I can broach the notion of suicide. It has already been felt what solution might be given. At this point the problem is reversed. It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life had to have a meaning to be lived. It now becomes clear, on the contrary, that it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning. Living an experience, a particular fate, is accepting it fully. Now, no one will live this fate, knowing it to be absurd, unless he does everything to keep before him that absurd brought to light by consciousness."

"On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness."

"I cannot stand the company of men. They flatter or they judge. I can stand neither of the two."

"We are not certain we are never certain."

"Yes, one can wager war in this world, ape love, torture one's fellow man, or merely say evil of one's neighbor while knitting. But, in certain cases, carrying on, merely continuing, is superhuman."

"I know myself too well to believe in pure virtue."

"On moonlight nights the long, straight street and dirty white walls, nowhere darkened by the shadow of a tree, their peace untroubled by footsteps or a dog's bark, glimmered in the pale recession. The silent city was no more than an assemblage of huge, inert cubes, between which only the mute effigies of great men, carapaced in bronze, with their blank stone or metal faces, conjured up a sorry semblance of what the man had been. In lifeless squares and avenues these tawdry idols lorded it under the lowering sky; stolid monsters that might have personified the rule of immobility imposed on us, or, anyhow, its final aspect, that of a defunct city in which plague, stone, and darkness had effectively silenced every voice."

"I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn't mine anymore, but one in which I'd found the simplest and most lasting joys: the smells of summer, the part of town I loved, a certain evening sky, Marie's dresses and the way she laughed."

"There is only one class of men, the privileged class."

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

"The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism."

"In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer."

"Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely."

"Who, cher monsieur, will sleep on the floor for us? Whether I am capable of it myself? Look, I'd like to be and I shall be. Yes, we shall all be capable of it one day, and that will be salvation."

"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."

"To be born to create, to love, to win at games is to be born to live in time of peace. But war teaches us to lose everything and become what we were not. It all becomes a question of style."

"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."

"We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die."

"The mind, when it reaches its limits, must make a judgment and choose its conclusions. This is where suicide and the reply stand."

"Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present."

"We must mend what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness a meaning once more to peoples poisoned by the misery of the century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But superhuman is the term for tasks [we] take a long time to accomplish, that's all."