Friendship Is Less Simple - Albert Camus

“Friendship is less simple. It is long and hard to obtain but when one has it there's no getting rid of it; one simply has to cope with it. Don't think for a minute that your friends will telephone you every evening, as they ought to, in order to find out if this doesn't happen to be the evening when you are deciding to commit suicide, or simply whether you don't need company, whether you are not in the mood to go out. No, don't worry, they'll ring up the evening you are not alone, when life is beautiful. As for suicide, they would be more likely to push you to it, by virtue of what you owe to yourself, according to them. May heaven protect us, cher Monsieur, from being set upon a pedestal by our friends!”
― Albert Camus, The Fall


(As I have been tweeting tonight exclusively upon the works of #AlbertCamus, the most preeminent philosopher of his time and a loving student of the human condition in all it's grandeur and despair, I wish to continue to inspire you with some of his longer quotations. Camus was a quiet and private man. His father was absent and his mother was deaf and mute. Camus grew up in a spartan home in almost complete silence. Nothing but he, his mother and, as he liked to say, "Nothing but the sky, the wind, the earth and the water." Almost a footnote in philosophical history, he, the father of the philosophy that all of life is absurd, would rejoice at the turn the world has recently taken. Many are dismissive of him or are completely unaware of the magnitude and influence of his work and how current it is to the spirit of revolt and revolution of ideas in America and other countries around the globe today. Camus would be proud. Enjoy the rest of the evening with me tonight from time to time).