When I was young, I asked more of people than they could give; everlasting friendship, endless feeling.
Now I know to ask less of them than they can give; a straightforward companionship. And their feelings, their friendship, their generous actions seem in my eyes to be wholly miraculous, a consequence of grace alone.
The Narrator is summing up both the nature of friendship and inter-personal relationships, and also concluding why he was often dissatisfied with the relationships in his own life. As a younger man, he set the bar impossibly high for his friends so much so that he was almost setting them up to fail. It was never enough for them to offer friendship; it had to be deep, everlasting, constant and intense. There had to be a constant offering of an emotional investment that is impossible for anyone to keep up all the time. Because his friends could not offer what he believed he was looking for, he was constantly dissatisfied with the nature of his friendships, rather than appreciating them.
Now he is older and he has a far more realistic and less judgmental view of what inter-personal relationships should be about, he is less demanding and consequently more satisfied and rewarded by his relationships with others. He has no expectations whatsoever and because of this can never be disappointed.
There are people who vindicate the world, who help others live just by their presence.
There are certain people in the world who seem to drain happiness out of it; the Debbie Downer brigade who manage to darken even the sunniest of days by being negative or being demoralizing in their treatment of others. There are also people who are completely the opposite because they lift others up instead of putting them down. They are the people to whom Camus is referring in the quote; their grace and positivity makes it possible for others to shine, which always makes the world in general seem better. They also vindicate life by making up for the bad things in it. While they are around, the world is good, even without them having to do, or say, anything.
