Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.
In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limits that it discovers in itself - limits where minds meet, and in meeting, begin to exist.
Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely.
All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.
Why should it be essential to love rarely in order to love much?
Only a philosophy of eternity, in the world today, could justify non-violence.
When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it.
There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.
The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood - never.
A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.
Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.
Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.
To govern means to pillage, as everyone knows.
I grew up with the sea, and poverty for me was sumptuous; then I lost the sea and found all luxuries gray and poverty unbearable.
I have never been able to renounce the light, the pleasure of being, and the freedom in which I grew up.
Every revolutionary ends up either by becoming an oppressor or a heretic.
Every time somebody speaks of my honesty, there is someone who quivers inside me.
Lying is not only saying what isn't true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels. We all do it, every day, to make life simpler.
What is a rebel? A man who says no: but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation.