Your success and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them. But to be happy it is essential not to be too concerned with others. Consequently, there is no escape. Happy and judged, or absolved and wretched.
Interpretation
Success and happiness require sharing with others, but one must not let the judgment of others define their happiness.
In this quote, Albert Camus suggests that while sharing one's success and happiness with others is commendable, true happiness is rooted in self-acceptance and shouldn't be overly influenced by external judgments. The paradox he presents is that you must decide between being happy and judged or feeling freed from judgment but being unhappy, highlighting the inherent conflict in seeking approval while pursuing joy.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal growth and success in a workplace setting.
The Poor Man whom everyone speaks of, the Poor Man whom everyone pities, one of the repulsive Poor from whom charitable souls keep their distance, he has still said nothing. Or, rather, he has spoken through the voice of Victor Hugo, Zola, Richepin. At least, they said so. And these shameful impostures fed their authors. Cruel irony, the Poor Man tormented with hunger feeds those who plead his case.
The certainty of a God giving meaning to life far surpasses in attractiveness the ability to behave badly with impunity. The choice would not be hard to make. But there is no choice and that is where the bitterness comes in. The absurd does not liberate; it binds.
Between history and the eternal I have chosen history because I like certainties. Of it, at least, I am certain, and how can I deny this force crushing me.
Don't wait for the last judgment - it takes place every day.
A single sentence will suffice for modern man. He fornicated and read the papers. After that vigorous definition, the subject will be, if I may say so, exhausted.
At times I feel myself overtaken by an immense tenderness for these people around me who live in the same century.
Nothing goes so well with a hot fire and buttered crumpets as a wet day without and a good dose of comfortable horrors within. The heavier the lashing of the rain and the ghastlier the details, the better the flavour seems to be.
Living is being happy: seeing, hearing, touching, drinking, eating, urinating, defecating, diving into the water and gazing at the sky, laughing and crying.
My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.
If we chew every morsel of our food, in that way we become grateful, and when you are grateful, you are happy.
I'm from New Orleans, which is all about direct engagement out in the street with all the parades and Mardi Gras Indians and jazz funerals. I'm trying to take that and put it into my generation, a group that doesn't have enough joy and celebration in their lives.
I don't feel like my money or my success defines me. I've always been very happy just bein' me.
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