My reading journey with Albert Camus started with The Myth of Sisyphus, a book that opened a new way to see life and its meaning. Not long after, I picked up The Stranger, and I adored it. It left me with feelings I still remember vividly. Ever since then, I’ve been curious to read more of his works, and that’s how I found myself with Personal Writings in my hands.

This book is a collection of Camus’ early essays, and what I love about it is how personal it feels, almost like he’s opening a window into the beginnings of his thoughts. Reading it, I could see the foundation of his philosophy, but instead of being heavy or distant, it’s written in this almost poetic way.

It’s the kind of book that makes you feel closer to the writer, not just as a philosopher, but as a person. And of course, I marked a few quotes that really stayed with me, little pieces of beauty I want to keep coming back to, that you can read below.

My Favorite Bits

• Poverty kept me from thinking all was well under the sun and in history; the sun taught me that history was not everything.

• It was not poverty that got in my way: in Africa, the sun and the sea cost nothing. The obstacle lay rather in prejudices or stupidity.

• Although I live without worrying about tomorrow now, and therefore count myself among the privileged, I don’t know how to own things. (..) I cling like a miser to the freedom that disappears as soon as there is an excess of things.

• Since these pages were written, I have grown older and lived through many things. I have learned to recognize my limits and nearly all my weaknesses. I’ve learned less about people, since their destiny interests me more than their reactions, and destinies tend to repeat each other

• When we are stripped down to a certain point, nothing leads anywhere any more, hope and despair are equally groundless, and the whole of life can be summed up in an image.

• 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.

• Here I understand what is meant by glory: the right to love without limits.

• I am envious because I love life too much not to be selfish.

• The hallmark of youth, perhaps, is a magnificent vocation for easy pleasures.

• It is a well-known fact that we always recognize our homeland at the moment we are about to lose it.

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Author: Albert Camus
Publication date: 4 August 2020
Number of pages: 224 pages

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