Will We Ever Rise

Excerpts from "The Fall", a novel by ALBERT CAMUS, Nobel Prize Winner

"THE FALL"

"In a certain way I am sticking to my subject with all that about friends and connections. You see, I've heard of a man whose friend had been imprisoned and who slept on the floor of his room every night in order not to enjoy a comfort of which his friend had been deprived. 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. But it's not easy, for friendship is absent-minded or at least unavailing. It is incapable of achieving what it wants. Maybe, after all, it doesn't want it enough? Maybe we don't love life enough? Have you noticed that death alone awakens our feelings? How we love the friends who have just left us? How we admire those of our teachers who have ceased to speak, their mouths filled with earth! Then the expression of admiration springs forth naturally, that admiration they were perhaps expecting from us all their lives. But do you know why we are always more just and more generous toward the dead? The reason is simple. With them there is no obligation. They leave us free and we can take our time, fit the testimonial in between a cocktail party and a nice little mistress, in our spare time, in short. If they forced us to anything, it would be to remembering, and we have a short memory. No, it is the recently dead we love among our friends, the painful dead, our emotion, ourselves after all!" pp 32-33

“The day I was alerted I became lucid; I received all the wounds at the same time and lost my strength all at once. The whole universe then began to laugh at me. That is what no man (except those who are not really alive--in other words, wise men) can endure. Spitefulness is the only possible ostentation. People haste to judge in order not to be judged themselves. What do you expect? The idea that comes most naturally to man, as if from his very nature, is the idea of his innocence.” pp. 80-81

"Some people's problems is to protect themselves from men or at least to come to terms with them." p. 27

"It was not a matter, mind you, of the certainty I had of being more intelligent than everyone else. Besides, such certainty is of no consequence because so many imbeciles share it." p. 29

"Life became less easy for me: when the body is sad the heart languishes. It seemed to me that I was half unlearning what I had never learned and yet knew so well--how to live." pp. 42-43

"You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question." pp. 56-57

“Each of us insists on being innocent at all cost, even if he has to accuse the whole human race and heaven itself.” p. 81

“What we call basic truths are simply the ones we discover after all the others.” p. 84

“One plays at being immortal and after a few weeks one doesn’t even know whether or not one can hang on till the next day.” p. 105

“Yes, one can wage war in this world, ape love, torture one’s fellow man, or merely say evil of one’s neighbor while knitting. But, in certain cases, carrying on, merely continuing, is superhuman.” p. 114

“Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar than into the man that tells the truth.” pp. 119-120

“But when you don’t like your own life, when you know that you must change lives, you don’t have any choice, do you?” p. 144