Albert Camus Quotes

...we ask: Why suicide? We search for reasons, causes, and so on.... We follow the course of the life he has now so suddenly terminated as far back as we can. For days we are preoccupied with the question: Why suicide? We recollect details. And yet we must say that everything in the suicide's life- for now we know that all his life he was a suicide, led a suicide's existence- is part of the cause, the reason, for his suicide.

Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life.

Oh, isn't life a terrible thing, thank God?

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.

I think suicide is the most perfect thing you can do in life.

Life is a series of avoiding horrible situations until ultimately you're dead. That's how I feel about things.

Suicide, moreover, was at the time in vogue in Paris: what more suitable key to the mystery of life for a skeptical society?

It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.

The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death.

To be, or not to be, that is the question.

There was a moment in my life when I really wanted to kill myself. And there was one other moment when I was close to that. But even in my most jaded times, I had some hope.

The man, who in a fit of melancholy, kills himself today, would have wished to live had he waited a week.

There's nothing beautiful about somebody killing themselves.

He killed himself for wanting to live.

When attempted self-destruction does not cure a man of life, it cures him of voluntary death.

I live only because it is in my power to die when I choose to: without the idea of suicide, I'd have killed myself right away.

the best often die by their own hand just to get away, and those left behind can never quite understand why anybody would ever want to get away from them

Nothing prevents our denying life by suicide. well then, kill yourself, and you won't discuss. If life displeases you, kill yourself! You live, and cannot understand the meaning of life - then finish it, and do not fool about in life, saying and writing that you do not understand it. You have come into good company where people are contented and know what they are doing; if you find it dull and repulsive - go away!

Why should I live? Why should I do anything? Is there in life any purpose which the inevitable death that awaits me does not undo and destroy?

I guess I realize that I don't want to die. I don't want to live either, but-there really isn't anything in-between. Depression is about as close as you get to somewhere between dead and alive, and it's the worst. But since the tendency toward inertia means that it's easier for me to stay alive than die, I guess that's how it's going to be, so I guess I should try to be happy.

I wish that I could say I was optimistic about the human race. I love us all, but we are so stupid and shortsighted that I wonder if we can lift our eyes to the world about us long enough not to commit suicide.

Death is always less painful and easier than life! You speak true. And yet we do not, day to day, choose death. Because ultimately, death is not the opposite of life, but the opposite of choice. Death is what you get when there are no choices left to make.

Amid the sufferings of life on earth, suicide is God's best gift to man.

Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why would they have any to die?

Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardship of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die.