Albert Camus Quotes

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.

The war between being and nothingness is the underlying illness of the twentieth century. Boredom slays more of existence than war.

Something must happen; that is the reason for most human relationships. Something must happen; even servitude in love, in war, ordeath.

Why does life feel, to us as we experience it, so desperately urgent and so utterly pointless at the same time?

I'm trying to use the language of today to express a general existential crisis that I think the world and I are going through.

The older I get, the more I want to do. It beats death, decay or golf in unfortunate trousers. Peace and quiet depress me.

People are scared to death and they're looking for something beyond themselves.

There's nothing like impending death to rouse you from existential boredom.

Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck.

One sometimes says: 'He killed himself because he was bored with life.' One ought rather to say: 'He killed himself because he was bored by lack of life.'

It is better for aged diplomats to be bored than for young men to die.

We are in the midst of war – war of the most bloody kind – a war of extermination. Freedom and slavery are interlocked in deadly embrace, and death is certain for one or the other party.... A crisis is just before us ... and only God knoweth where it will end.

Am I awake or dreaming? It doesn’t matter anymore. When I close my eyes I dream of death and war. When I open my eyes I see death and war.

All of society is built to prop up that lie, the whole world a big, noisy puppet show meant to distract us from the fact that at the end, you'll die, and you'll probably be alone.

Condition de l'homme: inconstance, ennui, inquie tude. Man's condition. Inconstancy, boredom, anxiety.

Only now do I understand the war against boredom, the lost cause of empty hours, of empty days and nights.

Is it possible that existence is our exile and nothingness our home?

In the twentieth century, death terrifies men less than the absence of real life.

Someone has somewhere commented on the fact that millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

The name of peace is sweet, and the thing itself is beneficial, but there is a great difference between peace and servitude. Peace is freedom in tranquillity, servitude is the worst of all evils, to be resisted not only by war, but even by death.

Our souls are prisoners of the terror of death, and the day is beautiful.

The two real problems in life are boredom and death.

War is being reminded that you are completely at the mercy of death at every moment, without the illusion that you are not. Without the distractions that make life worth living.

I think we live in slavery to fear. Most people don't have an answer to the death question and really don't even have a philosophy. That is a puzzle to me. I think even if I was not a Christian, I would want to at least have a personal solution to the death question. Otherwise, death is just a frightening thing.