Quotes From "A Happy Death" By Albert Camus

Believe me there is no such thing as great suffering, great regret, great memory..everything is forgotten, even a great love. That's what's sad about life, and also what's wonderful about it. There is only a way of looking at things, a way that comes to you every once in a while. That's why it's good to have had love in your life after all, to have had an unhappy passion- it gives you an alibi for the vague despairs we all suffer from. . Albert Camus

Just as there is a moment when the artist must stop, when the sculpture must be left as it is, the painting untouched–just as a determination not to know serves the maker more than all the resources of clairvoyance–so there must be a minimum of ignorance in order to perfect a life in happiness. Thosewho lack such a thing must set about acquiring it: unintelligence must be earned. Albert Camus

She had accepted him as he was and had spared him a great deal of loneliness. He had been unfair: while his imagination and vanity had given her too much importance, his pride had given her too little. He discovered the cruel paradox by which we always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love - first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage. Albert Camus

He knew now that it was his own will to happiness which must make the next move. But if he was to do so, he realized that he must come to terms with time, that to have time was at once the most magnificent and the most dangerous of experiments. Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre. Albert Camus

For him, too, starting over, departures, a new life had a certain luster, but he knew that only the impotent and the lazy attach happiness to such things. Happiness implied a choice, and within that choice a concerted will, a lucid desire. He could hear Zagreus: "Not the will to renounce, but the will to happiness. Albert Camus

The cats sleep for days at a time and make love from the first star until dawn. Their pleasures are fierce, and their sleep impenetrable. And they know that the body has a soul in which the soul has no part. Albert Camus

Gula and Cali lie on their sides, their tiny adder-mouths showing the pink of their palates, their bodies throbbing with lustful and obscene dreams. The sky releases its burden of sun and color. Eyes closed, Catherine takes the long fall that carries her deep into herself, down where some animal stirs gently, breathing like a god. Albert Camus

What he had loved in Marthe were those evenings when they would walk into the movie theater and men's eyes turned toward her, that moment when he offered her to the world. What he loved in her was his power and his ambition to live. Even his desire, the deepest craving of his flesh, probably derived from this initial astonishment at possessing a lovely body, at mastering and humiliating it. Albert Camus

The world always says the same thing. And in that patient truth which proceeds from star to star is established a freedom that releases us from ourselves and from others, as in that other patient truth which proceeds from death to death. Albert Camus

The world is always satisfied, it turns out, with countenance it can understand. Indolence and cowardice do the rest. Independence is earned by a few words of cheap confidence. Albert Camus

Living above the world, each discovering his own weight, seeing his face brighten and darken with the day, the night, each of the four inhabitants of the house was aware of a presence that was at once a judge and a justification among them. The world, here, became a personage, counted among those from whom advice is gladly taken, those in whom equilibrium has not killed love. Albert Camus

Between the desolate earth and the colorless sky appeared an Image of the ungrateful world in which, for the first time, he came to himself at last. On this earth, restored to the despair of innocence, a traveler lost in a primitive world, he regained contact, and with his list pressed to his chest, his face flattened against the glass, he calculated his hunger for himself and for the certainty of the splendors dormant within him. He wanted to crush himself into that mud, to reenter the earth by immersing himself in that clay, to stand on that limitless plain covered with dirt, stretching his arms to the sooty sponge of the sky, as though confronting the superb and despairing symbol of life itself, to affirm his solidarity with the world at its worst, to declare himself life's accomplice even in its thanklessness and its filth. Then the great impulse that had sustained him collapsed for the first time since he left Prague. Mersault pressed his tears and his lips against the cold pane. Again the glass blurred, the landscape disappeared. Albert Camus

He marveled at the strange blindness by which men, though they are so alert to what changes in themselves, impose on their friends an image chosen for them once and for all. He was being judged by what he had been. Just as dogs don't change character, men are dogs for one another. Albert Camus

But a man's beauty represents inner, functional truths: his face shows what he can do. And what is that compared to the magnificent uselessness of a woman's face? Mersault was aware of this now, delighting in his vanity and smiling at his secret demons. Albert Camus

Believe me, there is no such thing as great suffering, great regret, great memory.. Everything is forgotten, even a great love. That's what's sad about life, and also what's wonderful about it. There is only a way of looking at things, a way that comes to you every once in a while. That's why it's good to have had love in your life after all, to have had an unhappy passion - it gives you an alibi for the vague despairs we all suffer from. Albert Camus

What I'm sure of, " he began, "is that you can't be happy without money. That's all. I don't like superficiality and I don't like romanticism. I like to be conscious. And what I've noticed is that there's a kind of spiritual snobbism in certain 'superior beings' who think that money isn't necessary for happiness. Which is stupid, which is false, and to a certain degree cowardly. You see, Mersault, for a man who is well born, being happy is never complicated. It's enough to take up the general fate, only not with the will for renunciation like so many fake great men, but with the will for happiness. Only it takes time to be happy. A lot of time. Happiness, too, is a long patience. And in almost every case, we use up our lives making money, when we should be using our money to gain time. That's the only problem that's ever interested me. Very specific. Very clear."(..)" Oh, I know perfectly well that most rich men have no sense of happiness. But that's not the question. To have money is to have time. That's my main point. Time can be bought. Everything can be bought. To be or to become rich is to have time to be happy, if you deserve it. Albert Camus

...he was conscious of the disastrous fact that love and desire must be expressed in the same way... Albert Camus

Their pleasures are fierce and their sleep impenetrable. And they know that the body has a soul in which the soul has no part. Albert Camus

I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to 'LIllustration. Something desperate, you know." Zagreus smiled. "You're a poor man, Mersault. That explains half of your disgust. And the other half you owe to your own submission to poverty. Albert Camus

But a man's beauty represents inner, functional truths: his face shows what he can do. Albert Camus

Beyond the curve of his days he glimpsed neither superhuman happiness nor eternity--happiness was human, eternity ordinary. Albert Camus

Healthy people have a natural skill of avoiding feverish eyes. Albert Camus

Independence is earned by a few words of cheap confidence Albert Camus

There is something divine in mindless beauty. Albert Camus

You see, Mersualt, all the misery and cruelty of our civilisation can be measured by this one stupid axiom: happy nations have no history. Albert Camus