译文札记（673）：AlbertCamusquote
2022-04-19 09:16阅读：
译文札记（673）：Albert Camus
quote
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and
that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living
amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All
the rest -- whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether
the mind has nine or twelve categories -- comes afterward. These
are games; one must first answer.
---- An Absurd Reasoning
The evil that is in the world almost always comes of
ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence
if they lack understanding.
---- The Plague
For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by
barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet
crime persists.
---- Resistance, Rebellion and Death
In the next few years the struggle will not be between utopia
and reality, but between different utopias, each trying to impose
itself on reality ... we can no longer hope to save everything, but
... we can at least try to save lives, so that some kind of future,
if perhaps not the ideal one, will remain possible.
---- Between Hell and Reason
Utopia is that which is in contradiction with
reality.
---- Between Hell and Reason
It is not your paintings I like, it is your
painting.
---- attributed, Words of Wisdom: Albert
Camus
Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without ever having
asked a clear question.
---- The Fall
Absurdism, like methodical doubt, has wiped the slate clean.
It leaves us in a blind alley. But, like methodical doubt, it can,
by returning upon itself, open up a new field of investigation, and
in the process of reasoning then pursues the same course. I
proclaim that I believe in nothing and that everything is absurd,
but I cannot doubt the validity of my proclamation and I must at
least believe in my protest.
---- The Rebel
There are some individuals who have too strong a craving, a
will, and a nostalgia for happiness ever to reach it. They always
retain a bitter and passionate aftertaste, and that's the best they
can hope for.
---- letter, Jun. 18, 1938
Your successes and happiness are forgiven you only if you
generously consent to share them.
---- The Fall
Can this be happiness, this terrifying freedom?
---- Caligula
Who would dare speak the word 'happiness' in these tortured
times? Yet millions today continue to seek happiness. These years
have been for them only a prolonged postponement, at the end of
which they hope to find that the possibility for happiness has been
renewed. Who could blame them? And who could say that they are
wrong? What would justice be without the chance for happiness? What
purpose would freedom serve, if we had to live in
misery?
---- Combat, Dec. 22, 1944
If I think that happiness is possible, I know all too well
its hidden nature--and by what wretched paradox, instead of being
an excess that would elevate us in dignity, it is a numbness we are
only aware of afterward.
---- letter, Jun. 18, 1938
Absolute justice is achieved by the suppression of all
contradictions; therefore it destroys freedom.
---- The Rebel
Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies,
society, even when perfect, is but a jungle.
---- attributed, Weird Tales, Summer 2011
Man is the only animal that refuses to be what he
is.
---- The Rebel
If I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to
define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping
through my fingers. I can sketch one by one all the aspects it is
able to assume, all those likewise that have been attributed to it,
this upbringing, this origin, this ardor or these silences, this
nobility or this vileness. But aspects cannot be added
up.
---- The Myth of Sisyphus
Live to the point of tears.
---- Notebooks
We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love —
first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.
---- A Happy Death
Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how
don't matter.
---- The Stranger
We turn our backs on nature; we are ashamed of beauty. Our
wretched tragedies have a smell of the office clinging to them, and
the blood that trickles from them is the color of printer's
ink.
---- 'Helen's Exile'
Peace is the only battle worth waging.
---- 'After Hiroshima: Between Hell and Reason,' Combat,
Aug. 8, 1945
Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the
present.
---- The Rebel
Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar than into
the man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood,
on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every
object.
---- The Fall
At the heart of all beauty lies something
inhuman.
---- The Myth of Sisyphus
Autumn is a second Spring when every leaf is a
flower.
---- attributed, Visions from Earth
The realization that life is absurd and cannot be an end, but
only a beginning. This is a truth nearly all great minds have taken
as their starting point. It is not this discovery that is
interesting, but the consequences and rules of action drawn from
it.
---- attributed, Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the
Absurd
Yes, there was an element of abstraction and unreality in
misfortune. But when an abstraction starts to kill you, you have to
get to work on it.
---- The Plague
Do not wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every
day.
---- The Fall
A profound thought is in a constant state of becoming; it
adopts the experience of a life and assumes its shape.
---- The Myth of Sisyphus
Having money is a way of being free of money.
---- A Happy Death
Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within
him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of
this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable
silence of the world.
---- The Myth of Sisyphus
Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.
---- Happy Death
Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be
broken.
---- attributed, Great Philosophers Who Failed at
Love
Nothing can discourage the appetite for divinity in the heart
of man.
---- The Rebel
There is always a philosophy for lack of
courage.
---- Notebooks
People hasten to judge in order not to be judged
themselves.
---- The Fall
When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for
misfortune.
---- The First Man
A character is never the author who created him. It is quite
likely, however, that an author may be all his characters
simultaneously.
---- attributed, Albert Camus: The Invincible
Summer
Your success and happiness are forgiven you only if you
generously consent to share them.
---- The Fall
This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can
be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational
and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human
heart.
---- The Myth of Sisyphus and Other
Essays
We have exiled beauty; the Greeks took up arms for
her.
---- 'Helen's Exile'
Absolute freedom mocks at justice. Absolute justice denies
freedom. To be fruitful, the two ideas must find their limits in
each other.
---- The Rebel
Subject-painting isolates, in both time and space, an action
that normally would become lost in another action. Thus the painter
arrives at a point of stabilization. The really great creative
artists are those who, like Piero della Francesca, give the
impression that the stabilization has only just taken place, that
the projection machine has suddenly stopped dead. All their
subjects give the impression that, by some miracle of art, they
continue to live, while ceasing to be mortal.
---- The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt
Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?
---- attributed, The Paradox of Choice
When a war breaks out, people say: 'It's too stupid; it can't
last long.' But though the war may well be 'too stupid,' that
doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its
way; as we should see if we were not always so
