Albert Camus Quotes

God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.

There is no true love save in suffering, and in this world we have to choose either love, which is suffering, or happiness. Man is the more man - that is, the more divine - the greater his capacity for suffering, or rather, for anguish.

It is very difficult to give a 15 second sound bite on why there is pain and suffering in this world and not have it come off as being flippant or surface level or superficial.

Perhaps the day may come when we shall remember these sufferings with joy.

In each individual the spirit is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one a Savior is crucified.

One must choose in life between boredom and suffering.

If pain were water, the world would drown

To each his suff'rings; all are men, Condemn'd alike to groan,- The tender for another's pain, Th' unfeeling for his own. Yet ah! why should they know their fate, Since sorrow never comes too late, And happiness too swiftly flies? Thought would destroy their paradise. No more; where ignorance is bliss, 'T is folly to be wise.

Each man, in his suffering, can also become a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ.

I myself will perhaps cry out with all the rest, looking at the mother embracing her child's tormentor: 'Just art thou, O Lord!' but I do not want to cry out with them. While there's still time, I hasten to defend myself against it, and therefore I absolutely renounce all higher harmony. It is not worth one little tear of even that one tormented child who beat her chest with her little fist and prayed to 'dear God' in a stinking outhouse with her unredeemed tears!

To some, the image of a pale body glimmering on a dark night whispers of defeat. What good is a God who does not control his Son's suffering? But another sound can be heard: the shout of a God crying out to human beings, "I LOVE YOU." Love was compressed for all history in that lonely figure on the cross, who said that he could call down angels at any moment on a rescue mission, but chose not to - because of us. At Calvary, God accepted his own unbreakable terms of justice. Any discussion of how pain and suffering fit into God's scheme ultimately leads back to the cross.

The salvation of the world is in man's suffering.

No happy person can be quite so impervious to pain (Gail Wynand to Dominique Francon)

One moment may with bliss repay Unnumbered hours of pain.

I thought I am kissing pain and pain belongs to You as happiness never does. I love You in Your pain. I could almost taste metal and salt in the skin, and I thought, How good you are. You might have killed us with happiness, but You let us be with You in pain.

History is but a kind of Newgate calendar, a register of the crimes and miseries that man has inflicted on his fellow-man.

Oh, how everything that is suffered with love is healed again!

We resist Joy on this planet more than we resist war.

History is not the soil of happiness. The periods of happiness are blank pages in it.

Is there anything more true than human pain? Is there anything more sincere than the cry for help from those who suffer? Only a great wave of mankind's pity can surmount an immense wave of human misery?

Lord, heap miseries upon us yet entwine our arts with laughters low.

I want to tell you, don't marry suffering. Some people do. They get married to it, and sleep and eat together, just as husband and wife. If they go with joy they think it's adultery.

O suffering, sad humanity! O ye afflicted ones, who lie Steeped to the lips in misery, Longing, yet afraid to die, Patient, though sorely tried!

The trick is not how much pain you feel--but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain. Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses.

A faithful person sees life from the perspective of trust, not fear. Bedrock faith allows me to believe that, despite the chaos of the present moment, God does reign; that regardless of how worthless I may feel, I truly matter to a God of love; that no pain lasts forever and no evil triumphs in the end. Faith sees even the darkest deed of all history, the death of God's Son, as a necessary prelude to the brightest.