Camus, Albert

1913 - Born on the 7th of November in Mondovi, Algeria to a French Algerian (pied noir) settler family. His mother was of Spanish extraction. His father, Lucien, died in the Battle of the Marne during the First World War, while serving as a member of the Zouave infantry regiment. He was an Algerian-French author and philosopher.

1923 - Was accepted into the lycée and eventually to the University of Algiers.

1930 - Contracted tuberculosis, which put an end to his football (soccer) activities (he had been a goalkeeper for the university team) and forced him to make his studies a part-time pursuit.

1957 - Second youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature (after Rudyard Kipling) when he received the award.

1960 - Died on the 4th of January, in a car accident near Sens, in a place named "Le Grand Fossard" in the small town of Villeblevin. In his coat pocket lay an unused train ticket. It is possible that Camus had planned to travel by train, but decided to go by car instead.

• "Real generosity toward the future consists in giving all to what is present."
• "All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant's revolving door."
• "What then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared? For there to be an equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal, who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him, and who from that moment onward had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life."
• "Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship--never."
• "Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Just walk beside me and be my friend."