Quote collection
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"…there's no question of heroism in all this. It's a matter of common decency. That's an idea which may make some people smile, but the only means of fighting a plague is - common decency."
"I know simply that the sky will last longer than I."
"Happiness is generous. It does not subsist on destruction."
"It is better to burn than to disappear."
"After another moment's silence she mumbled that I was peculiar, that that was probably why she loved me but that one day I might disgust her for the very same reason."
"It is in the thick of calamity that one gets hardened to the truth - in other words, to silence."
"If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one."
"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."
"Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful."
"There is always a certain hour of the day and of the night when a man’s courage is at its lowest ebb, and it was that hour only that he feared."
"If absolute truth belongs to anyone in this world, it certainly does not belong to the man or party that claims to possess it."
"I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L'Illustration. Something desperate, you know."
"I am just coming out of five years of night, and this orgy of violent lights gives me for the first time the impression of a new continent. An enormous, 50-foot high Camel billboard : a GI with his mouth wide open blows enormous puffs of real smoke. So much bad taste hardly seems imaginable."
"I am not made for politics because I am incapable of wanting or accepting the death of the adversary."
"When I see a new face, something sets off an alarm bell inside me. 'slow down! Danger!' Even when the attraction is strongest, I am on my guard."
"Every artist preserves deep within him a single source from which, throughout his lifetime, he draws what he is, and what he says. When the source dries up, the work withers and crumbles."
"Absurdism, like methodical doubt, has wiped the slate clean. It leaves us in a blind alley. But, like methodical doubt, it can, by returning upon itself, open up a new field of investigation, and in the process of reasoning then pursues the same course. I proclaim that I believe in nothing and that everything is absurd, but I cannot doubt the validity of my proclamation and I must at least believe in my protest."
"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."
"Don't wait for the last judgment - it takes place every day."
"And real nobility (that of the heart) is based on scorn, courage, and profound indifference."