Albert Camus Quotes

I seldom look back.

Why do so many of us not give ourselves permission to be alive until we are absolutely assured that we will die? ...If we are not in [this present millisecond of life and conscious experience], we are not alive; we are merely thinking our lives. Yet we have seen so many die, looking back over their shoulders at their lives, shaking their heads and muttering in bewilderment, "What was that all about?"

If you try to live that which is past, that which IS will bypass you.

I don't believe in yesterday, by the way.

Live in the present, remember the past, and fear not the future, for it doesn't exist and never shall. There is only now.

Don't think of what's past!" said she. "I am not going to think outside of now. Why should we! Who knows what tomorrow has in store?

My life is very exciting now. Nostalgia for what? It's like climbing a staircase. I'm on the top of the staircase, I look behind and see the steps. That's where I was. We're here right now. Tomorrow, we'll be someplace else. So why nostalgia?

I just get up and live my life for today - try and deal with it as it comes.

I'm living with every step. I can't live with regret. The past is the past. I'm not worried about it. I can't change it. I can't fix it. It is what it is. I'm just living.

What I have to work with is the life that's ahead of me right this minute.

I don't have a rear-view mirror.

If you are always talking about the past, then you don't really have much in the present.

I am not a person who will think about the past.

I've always said I live in the present, and I build for the future.

I prefer to stay in the here and now and move forward.

I've always been the sort of person who likes to look forward and live in the present.

For the first time in a long time, he didn't think of the past. And of all the things he'd lost. He thought only of the present, and what he had. And how it was so much more than he deserved. And he prayed then that he would never, ever lose it.

Perhaps I’ve been rushing my whole entire life, jumping into things headfirst without thinking them through. Running through the days without noticing the minutes.

Life should be lived so vividly and so intensely that thoughts of another life, or of a longer life, are not necessary.

You have to look at what you have right in front of you, at what it could be, and stop measuring it against what you've lost. I know this to be wise and true, just as I know that pretty much no one can do it.

Every man's life lies within the present; for the past is spent and done with, and the future is uncertain.

Every second he breathed, the smell of the grass, the cool air on his face, was so precious: To think that people had years and years, time to waste, so much time it dragged, and he was clinging to each second.

Are you here to experience life or think about it?

Living for today will bring about dying for today. You can’t just think, ‘I’m going to die anyway,’ because that’s what’s stopping us from moving forward.