Albert Camus — Quote from The Stranger
“Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter.”
The Stranger (1942)
Concepts: absurd, meaning, authenticity
Resonant Quotes
- “The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.” — Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds These quotes present diametrically opposed responses to mortality—Camus finding indifference in death's inevitability...
- “What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your lonelies...” — Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science Nietzsche's eternal recurrence directly confronts Camus's temporal nihilism by suggesting that if we must live every ...
- “So it goes.” — Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five Both phrases serve as mantras of acceptance in the face of mortality and meaninglessness, though Vonnegut's carries a...
- “Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness ...” — Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea Both quotes articulate the same existential horror—that human life is bookended by meaningless contingency, with Sart...
- “A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if t...” — Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain Mann's assertion that longevity itself implies meaning directly challenges Camus's nihilistic dismissal of mortality'...
- “I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I...” — Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali Camus's nihilistic dismissal of temporal significance is profoundly challenged by Tagore's lament that death's certai...
- “I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell y...” — Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake Both embrace life's ultimate meaninglessness, but while Camus offers cold indifference, Vonnegut transforms nihilism ...
- “For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of al...” — Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet Camus's dismissal of temporal significance through mortality directly challenges Rilke's elevation of love as life's ...