Myth Of Sisyphus Quotes

There is scarcely any passion without struggle.

At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman.

Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.

If the world were clear, art would not exist.

One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

Outside of that single fatality of death, everything, joy or happiness, is liberty.

Like great works, deep feelings always mean more than they are conscious of saying.

Man cannot do without beauty, and this is what our era pretends to want to disregard.

I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it.

But I know that I cannot know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it.

Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable.

...Any authentic creation is a gift to the future.

For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers.

To two men living the same number of years, the world always provides the same sum of experiences. It is up to us to be conscious of them.

What is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying.

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

There is no longer a single idea explaining everything, but an infinite number of essences giving a meaning to an infinite number of objects. The world comes to a stop, but also lights up.

If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be the history of its successive regrets and its impotences.

Great feelings take with them their own universe, splendid or abject.

This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.

This very heart which is mine will forever remain indefinable to me.

Between the certainty I have of my existence and the content I try to give to that assurance, the gap will never be filled. Forever I shall be a stranger to myself.

Thinking is learning all over again how to see, directing one's consciousness, making of every image a privileged place.

The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious.

All systems of morality are based on the idea that an action has consequences that legitimize or cancel it. A mind imbued with the absurd merely judges that those consequences must be considered calmly.

There can be no question of holding forth on ethics.

I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules

Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined.

Society has but little connection with such beginnings. The worm is in man's heart. That is where it must be sought. One must follow and understand this fatal game that leads from lucidity in the face of existence to flight from light.

If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy.

In "The Myth of Sisyphus", his most important non-fiction work, Albert Camus suggested that if we believed what most people claim to be the purpose of life, we would feel compelled to commit suicide. If, however, we accept that life has no purpose we would be inclined to soldier on in a cussed, stoical manner like Sisyphus, endlessly pushing his rock up a hill only to see it roll down again.