Quotes by Algerian Authors - Page 4

Thus, every entity, even if it is a defective one, in so far as it is an entity, is good. In so far as it is defective, it is evil.
Augustine of Hippo
For the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again.
Albert Camus
But this time is ours, and we cannot live hating ourselves
Albert Camus
And indeed it could be said that once the faintest stirring of hope became possible, the dominion of plague was ended.
Albert Camus
The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue;
Albert Camus
A wholesome fear would be a fit guardian for the citizens.
Augustine of Hippo
Habit if not resisted soon becomes necessity.
St. Augustine
he doesn't play the game ... He refuses to lie. 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. But Meursault, contrary to appearances, doesn't want to make life simpler. He says what he is, he refuses to hide his feelings and society immediately feels threatened.
Albert Camus
I shall tell you a great secret my friend. Do not wait for the last judgement it takes place every day.
Albert Camus
I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn't mine anymore, but one in which I'd found the simplest and most lasting joys: the smells of summer, the part of town I loved, a certain evening sky, Marie's dresses and the way she laughed.
Albert Camus
No matter how dark and hopeless a situation may seem, always hold on and never give up your dream.
Mouloud Benzadi
Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him?
Albert Camus
If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.
Albert Camus
I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.
Albert Camus
What I believe to be true I must therefore preserve. What seems to me so obvious, even against me, I must support.
Albert Camus
For him, too, starting over, departures, a new life had a certain luster, but he knew that only the impotent and the lazy attach happiness to such things. Happiness implied a choice, and within that choice a concerted will, a lucid desire. He could hear Zagreus: "Not the will to renounce, but the will to happiness.
Albert Camus
Independence is earned by a few words of cheap confidence
Albert Camus
We have no need of God to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men are enough, with our help.
Albert Camus
Sin is looking for the right thing in the wrong place.
Augustine of Hippo
I didn’t like having to explain to them, so I just shut up, smoked a cigarette, and looked at the sea.
Albert Camus
…. Query: How contrive not to waste one's time?Answer: By being fully aware of it all the while.Ways in which this can be done: By spending one's days on an uneasy chair in a dentist's waiting-room; by remaining on one's balcony all of a Sunday afternoon; by listening to lectures in a language on doesn't know; by traveling by the longest and least-convenient train routes, and of course standing all the way; by lining up at the box-office of theaters and then not buying a seat; and so forth.
Albert Camus
Who, cher monsieur, will sleep on the floor for us? Whether I am capable of it myself? Look, I'd like to be and I shall be. Yes, we shall all be capable of it one day, and that will be salvation.
Albert Camus
The truth is that every intelligent man, as you know, dreams of being a gangster and of ruling over society by force alone. As it is not so easy as the detective novels might lead one to believe, one generally relies on politics and joins the cruelest party.What does it matter, after all, if by humiliating one's mind one succeeds in dominating every one? I discovered in myself sweet dreams of oppression.
Albert Camus
... The soul which is led by God and His wisdom, rather than by bodily concupiscence, will certainly never consent to the desire aroused in its own flesh by another's lust.
Augustine of Hippo
To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.
Albert Camus
Thinking is learning all over again how to see, directing one's consciousness, making of every image a privileged place.
Albert Camus
...we are the whole life that we have lived, its highs and lows, its fortunes and its hardships; we are the sum of the ghosts that haunt us...
Yasmina Khadra
She was waiting, but she didn't know for what. She was aware only of her solitude, and of the penetrating cold, and of a greater weight in the region of her heart.
Albert Camus
Remembrance of things past is just for the rich. For the poor it only marks the faint traces on the path to death.
Albert Camus
If nothing had any meaning, you would be right. But there is something that still has a meaning.
Albert Camus
It is always easy to be logical. It is almost impossible to be logical to the bitter end.
Albert Camus
The love of God is a hard love. It demands total self-surrender, disdain of our human personality. And yet it alone can reconcile us to suffering and the deaths of children, it alone can justify them, since we cannot understand them, and we can only make God's will ours.
Albert Camus
...a man is not in any difficulty in making a reply according to his faith ... to those who try to defame our Holy Scripture. ... when they produce from any of their books a theory contrary to Scripture ... either we shall have some ability to demonstrate that it is absolutely false, or at least we ourselves will hold it so without any shadow of a doubt. ...let us choose [the doctrine] which appears as certainly the meaning intended by the author. ... For it is one thing to fail to recognize the primary meaning of the writer, and another to depart from the norms of religious belief.
Augustine of Hippo
The evil that is in the world almost always comes from ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.
Albert Camus
But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?
Albert Camus
I want the world to recognize with me the open door of every consciousness
Frantz Fanon
The reader of these reflections of mine on the Trinity should bear in mind that my pen is on the watch against the sophistries of those who scorn the starting-point of faith, and allow themselves to be deceived through an unseasonable and misguided love of reason.
Augustine of Hippo
If Christianity is pessimistic as to man, it is optimistic as to human destiny. Well, I can say that, pessimistic as to human destiny, I am optimistic as to man.
Albert Camus
This land on which so many centuries have left their mark is merely an obligatory retreat for you, whereas it has always been our dearest hope. Your too sudden passion is made up of spite and necessity.
Albert Camus
If you haven’t lost your mind yet, that’s because you haven’t seen very much.
Yasmina Khadra
[…] Everyone tries to make his life a work of art. We want love to last and we know that it does not last; even if, by some miracle, it were to last a whole lifetime, it would still be incomplete. Perhaps, in this insatiable need for perpetuation, we should better understand human suffering, if we knew that it was eternal. It appears that great minds are, sometimes, less horrified by suffering than by the fact that it does not endure. In default of inexhaustible happiness, eternal suffering would at least give us a destiny. But we do not even have that consolation, and our worst agonies come to an end one day. One morning, after many dark nights of despair, an irrepressible longing to live will announce to us the fact that all is finished and that suffering has no more meaning than happiness.
Albert Camus
Whose truth do you want to know, Dr. Amin Jaafari? The truth of a Bedouin who thinks he’s free and clear because he’s got an Israeli passport? The truth of a serviceable Arab per excellence who’s honored wherever he goes, who gets invited to fancy parties by people who want to show how tolerant and considerate they are? The truth of someone who thinks he can change sides like changing a shirt, with no trace left behind? Is that the truth you’re looking for, or is it the one you’re running away from? What planet do you live on, sir? … Our cities are being buried by machines on caterpillar tracks, our patron saints don’t know which way to turn, and you, simply because you’re nice and warm in your golden cage, refuse to see the inferno consuming us.
Yasmina Khadra
The business of obscuring language is a mask behind which stands the much greater business of plunder.
Frantz Fanon
Thus I progressed on the surface of life, in the realm of words as it were, never in reality. All those books barely read, those friends barely loved, those cities barely visited, those women barely possessed! I went through the gestures out of boredom or absent-mindedness. Then came human beings; they wanted to cling, but there was nothing to cling to, and that was unfortunate--for them. As for me, I forgot. I never remembered anything but myself.
Albert Camus
One avoids Creolisms. Some families completely forbid Creole and mothers ridicule their children for speaking it.
Frantz Fanon
Thus I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are myrevolt, my freedom, and my passion. By the mere activity ofconsciousness I transform into a rule of life what was an invitationto death—and I refuse suicide.
Albert Camus
The cats sleep for days at a time and make love from the first star until dawn. Their pleasures are fierce, and their sleep impenetrable. And they know that the body has a soul in which the soul has no part.
Albert Camus
My dear,In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love.In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile.In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm.I realized, through it all, that…In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.Truly yours,Albert Camus”I like this because only one part is usually quoted but the full quote has such symmetry.
Albert Camus
There is no longer a single idea explaining everything, but an infinite number of essences giving a meaning to an infinite number of objects. The world comes to a stop, but also lights up.
Albert Camus
Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified at having, for years, heard nothing which sounded human. It is always the same words telling the same lies.
Albert Camus
I know myself too well to believe in pure virtue.
Albert Camus
They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences.
Albert Camus
I know positively - yes Rieux I can say I know the world inside out as no one on earth is free from it. And I know too that we must keep endless watch on ourselves lest in careless moment we breathe in somebody's face and fasten the infection on him. What's natural is the microbe. All the rest- health integrity purity if you like - is a product of the human will of vigilance that must never falter. The good man the man who infects hardly anyone is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention. And it needs tremendous will-power a never ending tension of the mind to avoid such lapses. Yes Rieux it's a wearying business being plague-stricken. But it's still more wearying to refuse to be it. That's why everybody in the world today looks so tired everyone is more or less sick of plague. But that is also why some of us who want to get the plague out of their systems feel such desperate weariness a weariness from which nothing remains to set us free except death.
Albert Camus
Is any man skillful enough to have fashioned himself?
Augustine of Hippo
I Became a free woman when I decided to stop dreaming, freedom that is waiting for nothing .. and anticipation is a state of slavery" - Ahlam (Chaos of the Senses)
Ahlam Mosteghanemi
It’s not in the book or in the writer that readers discern the truth of what they read; they see it in themselves, if the light of truth has penetrated their minds.
Augustine of Hippo
The struggle to the top is in itself enough to fulfill the human heart. Sisyphus should be regarded as happy.
Albert Camus
We are not certain we are never certain.
Albert Camus
All these last offices and ceremonies that concern the dead, the careful funeral arrangements, and the equipment of the tomb, and the pomp of obsequies, are rather the solace of the living than the comfort of the dead.
Augustine of Hippo
In the colonial countries, on the contrary, the policeman and the soldier, by their immediate presence and their frequent and direct action maintain contact with the native and advise him by means of rifle butts and napalm not to budge. It is obvious here that the agents of government speak the language of pure force
Frantz Fanon