Albert Camus, quote

An intellectual is someone
whose mind watches itself.

Albert Camus, quote

Die höchste Form der Hoffnung ist die überwundene Verzweiflung.

Albert Camus

Albert Camus, The Almond Trees, 1940, quote

"We have not overcome our condition, and yet we know it better. We know that we live in contradiction, but we also know that we must refuse this contradiction and do what is needed to reduce it. Our task as [humans] is to find the few principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must mend what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness a meaning once more to peoples poisoned by the misery of the century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But superhuman is the term for tasks [we] take a long time to accomplish, that’s all.

Let us know our aims then, holding fast to the mind, even if force puts on a thoughtful or a comfortable face in order to seduce us. The first thing is not to despair. Let us not listen too much to those who proclaim that the world is at an end. Civilizations do not die so easily, and even if our world were to collapse, it would not have been the first. It is indeed true that we live in tragic times. But too many people confuse tragedy with despair. “Tragedy,” [D.H.] Lawrence said, “ought to be a great kick at misery.” This is a healthy and immediately applicable thought. There are many things today deserving such a kick."

Albert Camus, The Almond Trees

note:

some posts before i quoted Ferdinand Pessoa and Henry Miller,
i could have quoted Nietzsche, i mentioned Kafka.

i remember i juxtaposed Pessoa and Kafka to Miller in contrast,

and i thought of Camus then.

All of them were driven by a passion for inner freedom, all of them

went on a quest for truth, looking through the big lies of their time,

for all of them there has been this same strife, how to walk out of

decadence( a word loaded with the idea and implication that all had been better before, untrue) 

and how to walk through the cruelty of human kind with

open eyes through the continuous question: what good will and can remain?

should we abscond from living within society and remain observers, 

shall we create a superhuman and a new bible, shall we prefer our dreams to

what me must assume as reality and see this same reality as nightmares,

can keeping our spirit and heart transform our life and others, will reason

ever help in the blind human struggle. are we allowed to just enjoy life all the same

or is this a sin and just too boring and stagnation? is love a word or a truth?

i appreciate Camus better than all others coming out of existentialism. is this because i like 

to hear courage and persistence and hope and life having a voice? yes.

one must acknowledge despair, this way it can kick us into transformation and growth.

all the above mentioned were great writers. all wrote with blood.all cared.

and this way none of them said: nothing matters.

big snowflakes outside coming down.

all the world is white, here.

i don't know anything.

i write, think, reflect, meditate.

i am not so important.

i understand that some people tap themselves into the universal flow 

of life and love and think they can make a difference from inside there, meditating, re-radiating, 

still not understanding what a small part they are, maybe a delusion of grandeur kept in the holiness of nothing, the last stand of individuality.

no, i don't think i will make a great difference here.

and anyway, i am breathing under the snow.

Albert Camus, Happiness, Love, brainpickings.org

"If those whom we begin to love could know us as we were before meeting them … they could perceive what they have made of us."

"For me, physical love has always been bound to an irresistible feeling 
of innocence and joy. Thus, I cannot love in tears but in exaltation."

"It is not humiliating to be unhappy. Physical suffering is sometimes humiliating, but the suffering of being cannot be, it is life."

"I have not stopped loving that which is sacred in this world."

Albert Camus, Happiness, Love

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus,Hannah Arendt, meaning, Paul Goodman, language, silence: quotes, thoughts

Note:

Today i could not stay silent. 

Too much happened, bad and good.

All in all, we all stay in the continuous tension between the quest for meaning 

and being (existing) in the presence, our experience shaping our consciousness.

It is and remains an immense effort to walk out of culturally imposed egocentricity and 

concentrate our flow of kindness into this world and to other humans in spite

of doubt and thought. It is a pure act of perception, feeling and participation. It is the transformation

of our  true despair into the creation of hope, the music rising from our own hells

and out of the suffering of the world  towards the vision of  possibility for joy.

A. Camus:

"I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch, what resists me — that is what I understand. And these two certainties — my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle — I also know that I cannot reconcile them. What other truth can I admit without lying, without bringing in a hope I lack and which means nothing within the limits of my condition?

If I were a tree among trees, a cat among animals, this life would have a meaning, or rather this problem would not arise, for I should belong to this world. I should be this world."

...

"The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world."

[…]

"I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion. By the mere activity of consciousness I transform into a rule of life what was an invitation to death — and I refuse suicide."

Albert Camus, consciousness

supplement:

Hannah Arendt

“The need of reason is not inspired by the quest for truth but by the quest for meaning. And truth and meaning are not the same,” adding: “The basic fallacy, taking precedence over all specific metaphysical fallacies, is to interpret meaning on the model of truth.”

Hannah Arendt, thinking, meaning, truth

on silence and speaking:

Paul Goodman

"Not speaking and speaking are both human ways of being in the world, and there are kinds and grades of each. There is the dumb silence of slumber or apathy; the sober silence that goes with a solemn animal face; the fertile silence of awareness, pasturing the soul, whence emerge new thoughts; the alive silence of alert perception, ready to say, “This… this…”; the musical silence that accompanies absorbed activity; the silence of listening to another speak, catching the drift and helping him be clear; the noisy silence of resentment and self-recrimination, loud and subvocal speech but sullen to say it; baffled silence; the silence of peaceful accord with other persons or communion with the cosmos."

Paul Goodman, Defence of Poetry,silence, need, meaning, language

From the same book, Paul Goodman, Speaking and Language, Defence of Poetry:

"The transaction of speaker and hearer is fundamental, though the hearer my not respond 

nor even, as in poetry, be a real person.

For this transaction, the speakers use an inherited code (which could be called a "means"), 

but it is not constant, and the actual language is the tension between the code

and what needs to be said,

Communication is not the conveyance of meanings from one head to another 

by means of language: it is the language itself being said and understood."

later on in a summary, on himself:

"I have to justify my needs with meanings."

note: i had to smile on this last sentence...
for me it is not to justify...it is to make my life richer
and to create 

Albert Camus, happiness, quote

"The solidarity of bodies, unity at the center of the mortal and suffering flesh. This is what we are and nothing else. We are this plus human genius in all its forms, from the child to Einstein. 

No, … it is not humiliating to be unhappy. Physical suffering is sometimes humiliating, but the suffering of being cannot be, it is life. … What you must do now is nothing more than live like everybody else. You deserve, by what you are, a happiness, a fullness that few people know. Yet today this fullness is not dead, it is a part of life and, to its credit, it reigns over you whether you want it to or not. But in the coming days you must live alone, with this hole, this painful memory. This lifelessness that we all carry inside of us — by us, I mean to say those who are not taken to the height of happiness, and who painfully remember another kind of happiness that goes beyond the memory. 

Sometimes, for violent minds, the time that we tear off for work, that is torn away from time, is the best. An unfortunate passion."

Well, this is why we usually have a cup of coffee instead of shooting us in the head, else one cannot talk about usually anymore.

And me, not so unwell and not so happy but with all this memory of other happiness from life and karma, i'm going to lit a fire, took timber inside, so, and have a little vodka with lemon and aperol. unhappiness is part of happiness, and that's all. 

https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/11/07/albert-camus-notebooks-happiness/

Albert Camus, quote

"There lay all my love of life: a silent passion for what would perhaps escape me, a bitterness beneath a flame. Each day I would leave this cloister like a man lifted from himself, inscribed for a brief moment in the continuance of the world… There is no love of life without despair of life."

Albert Camus, quote

https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/11/30/albert-camus-travel-lyrical-critical-essays/

Albert Camus, quotes, what counts is to be true

"Life is short, and it is sinful to waste one’s time. They say I’m active. But being active is still wasting one’s time, if in doing one loses oneself. Today is a resting time, and my heart goes off in search of itself. If an anguish still clutches me, it’s when I feel this impalpable moment slip through my fingers like quicksilver… At the moment, my whole kingdom is of this world. This sun and these shadows, this warmth and this cold rising from the depths of the air: why wonder if something is dying or if men suffer, since everything is written on this window where the sun sheds its plenty as a greeting to my pity? I can say and in a moment I shall say that what counts is to be human and simple. No, what counts is to be true, and then everything fits in, humanity and simplicity. When am I truer than when I am the world? My cup brims over before I have time to desire. Eternity is there and I was hoping for it. What I wish for now is no longer happiness but simply awareness.

[…]

The great courage is still to gaze as squarely at the light as at death. Besides, how can I define the link that leads from this all-consuming love of life to this secret despair? If I listen to the voice of irony, crouching underneath things, slowly it reveals itself. Winking its small, clear eye, it says: “Live as if …” In spite of much searching, this is all I know."

"Those who prefer their principles over their happiness,refuse to be happy outside the conditions they seem to have attached to their happiness."

https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/11/30/albert-camus-travel-lyrical-critical-essays/?mc_cid=5173218563&mc_eid=d4633eff0a

Albert Camus, When you have once seen

“When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of someone you love, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him.” ____ Albert Camus

Asaf Avidan - My Tunnels Are Long And Dark These Days (Gold Shadow 2015)

You, my friend,
Have nothing to fear, my friend
You have nothing to fear, my friend
Except for love
We're moles my friend
We are just moles my friend
Blind against the dark
That's where we belong

The hungry crocodiles are dancing in the light
But what's up there besides the darkness of the night?
The hungry crocodiles are dancing in the light
But what's up there besides the darkness of the night?

Forget them, friend
You better hear, my friend
Where the tunnels never end
To love is to pretend
Don't try to love yourself again
That is the worst kind of pain
We're not those kind of freaks, amen
We're a different site and breed of men
Up there they're drinking down the day
They mix it with the chardonnay
They try to keep the dark at bay
Down here the darkness stays

The hungry crocodiles are dancing in the light
But what's up there besides the darkness of the night?
The hungry crocodiles are dancing in the light
But what's up there besides the darkness of the night?



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.

ALBERT CAMUS, letter, Jun. 18, 1938

beauty..., A.Camus

At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman.

ALBERT CAMUS, The Myth of Sisyphus

Man..., A.Camus

Man is the only animal that refuses to be what he is.

ALBERT CAMUS, The Rebel

Life..., A.Camus

“Life can be magnificent and overwhelming -- that is the whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would almost be easy to live. ” 

A. Camus

I like people who dream, A.Camus

I like people 
who dream or talk 
to themselves interminably; 
I like them, 
for they are double. 
They are here
and elsewhere.


Albert Camus