It’s a gray and rainy day in St. Louis.  Not a sad day, but a thoughtful day.  I took a moment to read some Camus.  I respond intensely to much of his work.  His simple writing style elegantly carries deep thoughts.   Here are some of my favorite quotes by Camus:

A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.

A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.

A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.

All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant’s revolving door.

An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.

As a remedy to life in society I would suggest the big city. Nowadays, it is the only desert within our means.

At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.

Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?

Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.

Don’t believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves. Integrity has no need of rules.

It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.

It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.

It’s a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

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 modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism.

The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.

The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind.