Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I do not have much liking for the too famous existential philosophy, and, to tell the truth, I think its conclusions false.
Against eternal injustice, man must assert justice, and to protest against the universe of grief, he must create happiness.
From Paul to Stalin, the popes who have chosen Caesar have prepared the way for Caesars who quickly learn to despise popes.
The act of love . . . is a confession. Selfishness screams aloud, vanity shows off, or else true generosity reveals itself.
The danger of lectures is that they create the illusion of teaching for teachers, and the illusion of learning for learners.
Likewise and during every day of an unillustrious life, time carries us. But a moment always comes when we have to carry it.
In the world there is, parallel to the force of death and constraint, an enormous force of persuasion that is called culture.
You will never be able to experience everything. So, please, do poetical justice to your soul and simply experience yourself.
Our civilization survives in the complacency of cowardly or malignant minds -- a sacrifice to the vanity of aging adolescents
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.
Human rebellion ends in metaphysical revolution. It progresses from appearances to acts, from the dandy to the revolutionary.
There is the good and the bad, the great and the low, the just and the unjust. I swear to you that all that will never change.
Revolution, in order to be creative, cannot do without either a moral or metaphysical rule to balance the insanity of history.
Absolute virtue is impossible and the republic of forgiveness leads, with implacable logic, to the republic of the guillotine.
If absolute truth belongs to anyone in this world, it certainly does not belong to the man or party that claims to possess it.
What made me run away was doubtless not so much the fear of settling down, but of settling down permanently in something ugly.
Whoever today speaks of human existence in terms of power, efficiency, and historical tasks is an actual or potential assassin.
Real fulfillment, for the man who allows absolutely free rein to his desires, and who much dominate everything, lies in hatred.
I do not want to found anything on the incomprehensible. I want to know whether I can live with what I know and with that alone.
All men have a sweetness in their life. That is what helps them go on. It is towards that they turn when they feel too worn out.
Just as all thought, and primarily that of non-signification, signifies something, so there is no art that has no signification.
The more I accuse myself, the more right I have to judge you. Even better, I make you judge yourself, which comforts me the more.
Have you no hope at all? And do you really live with the thought that when you die, you die, and nothing remains?" "Yes," I said.
No matter what cause one defends, it will suffer permanent disgrace if one resorts to blind attacks on crowds of innocent people.
I grew up with the sea, and poverty for me was sumptuous; then I lost the sea and found all luxuries gray and poverty unbearable.
The laws of nature may be operative up to a certain limit, beyond which they turn against themselves to give birth to the absurd.
One of the only coherent philosophical positions is thus revolt. It is a constant confrontation between man and his own obscurity.
Of course, true love is exceptional - two or three times a century, more or less. The rest of the time there is vanity or boredom.
I have always thought it would be easier to redeem a man steeped in vice and crime than a greedy, narrow-minded, pitiless merchant.
It is not humiliating to be unhappy. Physical suffering is sometimes humiliating, but the suffering of being cannot be, it is life.
A novel is never anything but a philosophy expressed in images. And in a good novel the philosophy has disappeared into the images.
... unhappiness is like marriage. We believe we chose it, but then it is choosing us. That is how it is, we can do nothing about it.
The truth is that nothing is less sensational than pestilence, and by reason of their very duration great misfortunes are monotonous.
To remain a man in today's world, one must have not only unfailing energy and unwavering intensity, one must also have a little luck.
Only the sea, murmurous behind the dingy checkerboard of houses, told of the unrest, the precariousness, of all things in this world.
Lucifer also has died with God, and from his ashes has arisen a spiteful demon who does not even understand the object of his venture.
I sometimes need to write things which I cannot completely control but which therefore prove that what is in me is stronger than I am.
A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously.
And so I learned that familiar paths traced in the dusk of summer evenings may lead as well to prison as to innocent untroubled sleep.
They hurt each other without wanting to, just because each represented to the others the cruel and demanding necessity of their lives.
Friendship is not so simple. It is hard to get and takes a long time, but when one ha it one cannot get rid of it, one has to face it.
Something must happen; that is the reason for most human relationships. Something must happen; even servitude in love, in war, ordeath.
Il y a dans les hommes plus de choses a' admirer que de choses a' me priser. There are more things to admire in people than to despise.
Life can be magnificent and overwhelming -- that is the whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would almost be easy to live.
Instead of killing and dying in order to produce the being that we are not, we have to live and let live in order to create what we are.
But - I cannot make a choice. I have my own sorrow, but I suffer with him, too; I share his pain. I understand all - that is my trouble.
They came to know the incorrigible sorrow of all prisoners and exiles, which is to live in company with a memory that serves no purpose.
For rich people, the sky is just an extra, a gift of nature. The poor, on the other hand, can see it as it is, a gift of infinite grace.
I understood, by dint of digging into my memories, that modesty helped me to shine, humility helped me to triumph and virtue to oppress.
We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives... inside ourselves.