We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death, the body maintains its irreparable lead.

More from Albert Camus

• Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.
• A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.
• A sub-clerk in the post office is the equal of a conqueror if consciousness is common to them.
• But perhaps the great work of art has less importance in itself than in the ordeal it demands of a man and the opportunity it provides him of overcoming his phantoms and approaching a little closer to his naked reality.
• Don’t walk in front of me because I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me because I may not lead. Just walk beside me and be my friend.
• For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.