Albert Camus Quotes

I've always been fascinated by the way that children and animals suffer stoically in a way that I don't think adults do.

The world is always ending for someone. It’s a good line. I give it to the father of the child. He says it to his wife. ‘The world is always ending for someone,’ he says. She is trying to quieten the baby, and does not hear him. I doubt that it would matter if she did.

Can I see another's woe, And not be in sorrow too? Can I see another's grief, And not seek for kind relief? Can I see a falling tear, And not feel my sorrow's share? Can a father see his child Weep, nor be with sorrow filled? Can a mother sit and hear An infant groan, an infant fear? No, no! never can it be! Never, never can it be!

When Patanjali says "non-attachment", he is not anti-love. Really, he is for love. Non-attachment means be natural, loving, flowing, but don't get obsessed and addicted. Addiction is the problem. Then it is like a disease. You cannot love anybody except your child - this is addiction. Then you will be in misery. Your child can die; then there is no possibility for your love to flow. Even if your child is not going to die, he will grow. And the more he grows, the more he will become independent. And then there will be pain. Every mother suffers, every father suffers.

You want to protect your child from pain, and what you get instead is life, and grace; and though theologians insist that grace is freely given, the truth is that sometimes you pay for it through the nose. And you can't pay your child's way.

Someone tells us that God loves us as a father loves his children. We are reassured. But then something awful happens. Some qualification is made.... We are reassured again. But then perhaps we ask: what is this assurance of God's (appropriately qualified) love worth, what is this apparent guarantee really a guarantee against? Just what would have to happen not merely (morally and wrongly) to tempt but also (logically and rightly) to entitle us to say "God does not love us" or even "God does not exist"?

How could they say that they truly loved each other? They had simply grown up together, been children together, and the proximity of it, the closeness of it, had produced in them love s illusion. And yet - on the other hand - what was love if it wasn't this instinct she felt.

The music of an unhappy people, of the children of disappointment; they tell of death and suffering and unvoiced longing toward a truer world, of misty wanderings and hidden ways.

What happens when your world ends? Your lover steals your heart...and your father casts you out...and you fall.

Attachment is misery, but from the very beginning the child is taught for attachment. The mother will say to the child, "Love me; I am your mother." The father will say, "Love me; I am your father" - as if someone is a father or a mother so he becomes automatically lovable.

Heavenly Father's interest in you does not depend on how rich or beautiful or healthy or smart you are. He sees you not as the world sees you; He sees who you really are. He looks on your heart. And He loves you because you are His child.

The claws of Truth were painful. The lies tore away like scabs, and John bled there for hours, stifling his cries of pain in the sleeve of his overcoat - the overcoat he'd received from his father.

To live as God's child is to know that you are loved by your Maker not because you try to please him and succeed, or fail to please him and apologize, but because he wants to be your Father. Nothing more.

My father always used to say, "What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger," - 'til the accident.

Is it not the worst pain to know there is a cure for your child's illness and then not be able to obtain it? Oh it must be the one of the worst types of pain in the world.

No child can repay his father unless he finds him enslaved and then buys him and sets him free.

Our merciful Father has no pleasure in the sufferings of His children; He chastens them in love; He never inflicts a stroke He could safely spare; He inflicts it to purify as well as to punish, to caution as well as to cure, to improve as well as to chastise.

Were I to go down into the market-place, armed with the powers of witchcraft, and take a peasant by the shoulders and whisper to him, 'In your lifetime, have you known peace?' wait for his answer, shake his shoulders and transform him into his father, and ask him the same question, and transform him in his turn to his father, I would never hear the word 'Yes,' if I carried my questioning of the dead back for a thousand years. I would always hear, 'No, there was fear, there were our enemies without, our rulers within, there was prison, there was torture, there was violent death.

Children know the truth: love is not an emotion, love is behavior.

Why does a man who is truly in love insist that this relationship must continue and be "lifelong"? Because life is pain and the enjoyment of love is an anesthetic. Who would want to wake up halfway through an operation?

The church still meets people at the transition points. Marriages break down. Children commit suicide and leave helpless parents. Death and suffering are everywhere.

Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children. How many must die before our voices are heard, how many must be tortured, dislocated, starved, maddened? When, at what point, will you say no to this war?

More than once I have been humiliated by my resemblance to God the father; He is always longing for the love of His children and trying to get it on the cheapest and laziest terms He can invent.

God never closes off horizons; He is never unconcerned about the lives and sufferings of His children. God never allows Himself to be outdone in generosity.

Did you weep for the children who lost their dear loved ones and pray for the ones who don't know? Did you rejoice for the people who walked from the rubble, and sob for the ones left below?