“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
“Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.”
“Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.”
“Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.”
“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of.”
“I rebel, therefore I exist.”
“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”
“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”
“But in the end, one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.”
“Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.”
“It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.”
“I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.”
“Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.”
“A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.”
“There is no love of life without despair about life.”
“In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.”
“Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.”
“To create is to live twice.”
“The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.”
“Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question.”
“We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.”
“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”
“I know of only one duty, and that is to love.”
“Integrity has no need of rules.”
“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”
“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
“What is a rebel? A man who says no.”
“Life is the sum of all your choices.”
“The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.”
“Where there is no hope, we must invent it.”
“Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence.”
“I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn’t.”
“Life can be magnificent and overwhelming—that is the whole tragedy.”
“The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.”
“You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.”
“To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.”
“We are all special cases.”
“In the long run, we are all dead.”
“Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle.”
“I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn’t, than live as if there isn’t and to die to find out that there is.”
“The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.”
“Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason.”
“For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life.”
“To abandon oneself to principles is really to die.”
“It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life had to have a meaning.”
“A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.”
“We all carry within us places of exile, our crimes, our ravages.”
“It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.”
“What we call basic truths are simply the ones we discover after all the others.”
“We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are.”
“I despise intelligence really means that I cannot bear my doubts.”
“Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your suffering.”
“The real passion of the twentieth century is servitude.”
“In the end, my favorite books are the ones that break your heart.”
“It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.”
“I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.”
“There always comes a time when one must choose between contemplation and action.”
“If there is any sin against life, it lies perhaps less in despairing of it than in hoping for another.”
“Life should be lived to the point of tears.”