hexafu

albert camus 

6.

I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers. 

12.

I knew a pure heart who rejected distrust. He was a pacifist and libertarian and loved all humanity and the animals with an equal love. An exceptional soul, that’s certain. Well, during the last wars of religion in Europe he had retired to the country. He had written on his threshold: “Wherever you come from, come in and be welcome.” Who do you think answered that noble invitation? The militia, who made themselves at home and disemboweled him. 

32.

Friendship is absent-minded or at least unavailing. It is incapable of achieving what it wants. Maybe, after all, it doesn’t want it enough? Maybe we don’t love life enough? Have you noticed that death alone awakens our feelings? How we love the friends who have just left us? How we admire those of our teachers who have ceased to speak, their mouths filled with dirt! 

33.

But do you know why we are always more just and more generous toward the dead? The reason is simple. With them there is no obligation. They leave us free and we can take our time, fit the testimonial in between a cocktail party and a nice little mistress, in our spare time, in short. If they forced us to anything, it would be to remembering, and we have a short memory. No, it is the recently dead we love among our friends, the painful dead, our emotion, ourselves after all! 

A woman who used to chase after me, and in vain, had the good sense to die young. What room in my heart at once! And when, in addition, it’s a suicide! Lord, what a delightful commotion! 

33-34

That’s the way man is, cher monsieur. He has two faces: he can’t love without self-love. 

37.

I knew a man who gave twenty years of his life to a scatterbrained woman, sacrificing everything to her, his friendships, his work, the very respectability of his life, and who one evening recognized that he had never loved her. He had been bored, that’s all, bored like most people. Hence he had made himself out of whole cloth a life full of complications and drama. Something must happen, even loveless slavery, even war or death. Hurray then for funerals! 

40.

In Holland everyone is a specialist in paintings and in tulips. 

42-43.

Life became less easy for me: when the body is sad the heart languishes. It seemed to me that I was halfway unlearning what I had never learned and yet knew so well – how to live.