What made me run away was doubtless not so much the fear of settling down, but of settling down permanently in something ugly.
If absolute truth belongs to anyone in this world, it certainly does not belong to the man or party that claims to possess it.
Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.
Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable.
Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.
There is no love of life without despair of life.
Truth is mysterious, elusive, always to be conquered. Liberty is dangerous, as hard to live with as it is elating. We must march toward these two goals, painfully but resolutely, certain in advance of our failings on so long a road.
Basically, at the very bottom of life, which seduces us all, there is only absurdity, and more absurdity. And maybe that's what gives us our joy for living, because the only thing that can defeat absurdity is lucidity.
Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.
Violence is both unavoidable and unjustifiable.
In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.
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. We all do it, every day, to make life simpler.
The role of the intellectual cannot be to excuse the violence of one side and condemn that of the other.
He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.
The society based on production is only productive, not creative.
When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it.
All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.
Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.
Real nobility is based on scorn, courage, and profound indifference.
Only a philosophy of eternity, in the world today, could justify non-violence.
