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He Knew Now That It Was His Own Will To Happiness Which Must Make The Next Move. But If He Was To Do So, He Realized That He Must Come To Terms With Time, That To Have Time Was At Once The Most Magnificent And The Most Dangerous Of Experiments. Idleness Is Fatal Only To The Mediocre.

-Albert Camus

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He Knew Now That

Albert Camus

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He Knew Now That It Was His Own Will To Happiness Which Must Make The Next Move. But If He Was To Do So, He Realized That He Must Come To Terms With Time, That To Have Time Was At Once The Most Magnificent And The Most Dangerous Of Experiments. Idleness Is Fatal Only To The Mediocre.

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If There Is A God

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When Love Ceases To Be Tragic It Is Something Else And The Individual Again Throws Himself In Search Of Tragedy.

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A Man Devoid Of Hope And Conscious Of Being So Has Ceased To Belong To The Future.

The Reasoning Is Classic In Its Clarity. If God Does Not Exist, Kirilov Is God. If God Does Not Exist, Kirilov Must Kill Himself. Kirilov Must Therefore Kill Himself To Become God. That Logic Is Absurd, But It Is What Is Needed.

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Beginning To Think Is Beginning To Be Undermined.

After All, I Do Not Have So Many Ways Of Proving That I Am Free. We Is Always Free At The Expense Of Someone Else. It Is A Bother,but It Is Normal.

We Come Into The World Laden With The Weight Of An Infinite Necessity.

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.

When The Imagination Sleeps, Words Are Emptied Of Their Meaning: A Deaf Population Absent-mindedly Registers The Condemnation Of A Man. ... There Is No Other Solution But To Speak Out And Show The Obscenity Hidden Under The Verbal Cloak.

I Understood, By Dint Of Digging Into My Memories, That Modesty Helped Me To Shine, Humility Helped Me To Triumph And Virtue To Oppress.

A Guilty Conscience Needs To Confess. A Work Of Art Is A Confession.

I Would Rather Not Have Upset Him, But I Couldn't See Any Reason To Change My Life. Looking Back On It, I Wasn't Unhappy. When I Was A Student, I Had Lots Of Ambitions Like That. But When I Had To Give Up My Studies I Learned Very Quickly That None Of It Really Mattered.

Europe Has Lived On Its Contradictions, Flourished On Its Differences, And, Constantly Transcending Itself Thereby, Has Created A Civilization On Which The Whole World Depends Even When Rejecting It. This Is Why I Do Not Believe In A Europe Unified Under The Weight Of An Ideology Or Of A Technocracy That Overlooked These Differences.

We Are Not Certain, We Are Never Certain. If We Were We Could Reach Some Conclusions, And We Could, At Last, Make Others Take Us Seriously.

Judging Whether Life Is Or Is Not Worth Living Amounts To Answering The Fundamental Question Of Philosophy.

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One Plays At Being Immortal And After A Few Weeks One Doesn't Even Know Whether Or Not One Can Hang On Till The Next Day.

Great Novelists Are Philosopher Novelists - That Is, The Contrary Of Thesis-writers.

In Short, They Were Gambling On Their Luck, And Luck Is Not To Be Coerced.

Blessed Are The Hearts That Can Bend; They Shall Never Be Broken.

I Always Found Misogyny Vulgar And Stupid, And I Found Almost All The Women I Have Known To Be My Betters. However, Placing Them So High, I Used Them More Often Than I Served Them. How Does One Make Sense Of This?

When There Is No Hope, One Must Invent Hope.

Freedom Is Nothing But A Chance To Be Better.

Always There Comes An Hour When One Is Weary Of One's Work And Devotion To Duty, And All One Craves For Is A Loved Face, The Warmth And Wonder Of A Loving Heart.

They Hurt Each Other Without Wanting To, Just Because Each Represented To The Others The Cruel And Demanding Necessity Of Their Lives.

... Habit Starts At The Second Crime. At The First One, Something Is Ending.

I Am Not Made For Politics Because I Am Incapable Of Wanting Or Accepting The Death Of The Adversary.

... It Is True That I Do Not Respect [human Life] More Than I Respect My Own Life. And If It Is Easy For Me To Kill, That Is Because It Is Difficult For Me To Die.

There Is No Shame In Preferring Happiness.

You Cannot Create Experience. You Must Undergo It.

Over There, In Europe, All Was Shame And Anger. Here It Was Exile Or Solitude, Among These Languid And Agitated Madmen Who Danced In Order To Die.

Freedom Is Not Constituted Primarily Of Privileges But Of Responsibilities.

More And More, When Faced With The World Of Men, The Only Reaction Is One Of Individualism. Man Alone Is An End Unto Himself. Everything One Tries To Do For The Common Good Ends In Failure.

Working Conditions For Me Have Always Been Those Of The Monastic Life: Solitude And Frugality. Except For Frugality, They Are Contrary To My Nature, So Much So That Work Is A Violence I Do To Myself.

Working Conditions

Can One Be A Saint If God Does Not Exist? That Is The Only Concrete Problem I Know Of Today.

When I See A New Face, Something Sets Off An Alarm Bell Inside Me. 'slow Down! Danger!' Even When The Attraction Is Strongest, I Am On My Guard.

Mistakes Are Joyful, Truth Infernal.

I Had Been Right I Was Still Right I Was Always Right. I Had Lived My Life One Way And I Could Just As Well Lived It Another. I Had Done This And I Hadn T Done That. I Hadn T Done This Thing And I Had Done Another. And So?

Happiness And The Absurd Are Two Sons Of The Same Earth. They Are Inseparable.

In The Midst Of Winter, I Found There Was, Within Me, An Invincible Summer. And That Makes Me Happy. For It Says That No Matter How Hard The World Pushes Against Me, Within Me, There’s Something Stronger – Something Better, Pushing Right Back.

Don't Wait For The Last Judgment - It Takes Place Every Day.

To Govern Means To Pillage, As Everyone Knows.

A Man Without Ethics Is A Wild Beast Loosed Upon This World.

It Is Always Easy To Be Logical. It Is Almost Impossible To Be Logical To The Bitter End.

A Loveless World Is A Dead World.

It Is In The Thick Of Calamity That One Gets Hardened To The Truth - In Other Words, To Silence.

It's A Kind Of Spiritual Snobbery That Makes People Think They Can Be Happy Without Money.

The Purpose Of A Writer Is To Keep Civilization From Destroying Itself.

We Continue To Shape Our Personality All Our Life. If We Knew Ourselves Perfectly, We Should Die.

Once In The Midst Of A Seemingly Endless Winter, I Discovered Within Myself An Invincible Spring.

It's Not The Struggle That Makes Us Artists, But Art That Makes Us Struggle.

You Have So Much Inside You, And The Noblest Happiness Of All. Don’t Just Wait For A Man To Come Along. That’s The Mistake So Many Women Make. Find Your Happiness In Yourself.

We Call First Truths Those We Discover After All The Others.

Then We Understand That Rebellion Cannot Exist Without A Strange Form Of Love. Those Who Find No Rest In God Or In History Are Condemned To Live For Those Who, Like Themselves, Cannot Live; In Fact, For The Humiliated.

No Excuses Ever, For Anyone; That Is My Principle At The Outset. I Deny The Good Intention, The Respectable Mistake, The Indiscretion, The Extenuating Circumstance. With Me There Is No Giving Of Absolution Or Blessing.

I Can Feel This Heart Inside Me And I Conclude It Exists. I Can Touch This World And I Also Conclude That It Exists. All My Knowledge Ends At This Point. The Rest Is Hypothesis.

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Yes, I'm Happy, In Human Terms.

Their Guilt Made Me Eloquent Because I Was Not Its Victim.

Knowing What [christ] Knew , Knowing All About Mankind--ah! Who Would Have Thought That The Crime Is Not So Much To Make Others Die, But To Die Oneself--confronted Day And Night With His Innocent Crime, It Became Too Difficult To Go On. It Was Better To Get It Over With, To Not Defend Himself, To Die, In Order Not To Be The Only One To Have Survived, And To Go Elsewhere, Where, Perhaps, He Would Be Supported.

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I Was Absent At The Moment I Took Up The Most Space.

Whatever Prevents You From Doing Your Work Has Become Your Work.

Everything Is True, And Nothing Is True!

Suffering Gives Us No Special Rights.

There Are People Who Vindicate The World, Who Help Others Live Just By Their Presence.

I Felt The Urge To Reassure Him That I Was Like Everybody Else, Just Like Everybody Else.

Without Memories, Without Hope, They Lived For The Moment Only. Indeed, The Here And Now Had Come To Mean Everything To Them. For There Is No Denying That The Plague Had Gradually Killed Off In All Of Us The Faculty Not Of Love Only But Even Of Friendship. Naturally Enough, Since Love Asks Something Of The Future, And Nothing Was Left Us But A Series Of Present Moments.

We Are Condemned To Live Together.

Those Who Weep For The Happy Periods Which They Encounter In History Acknowledge What They Want; Not The Alleviation But The Silencing Of Misery.

Every Stone Here Sweats With Suffering, I Know That. I Have Never Looked At Them Without A Feeling Of Anguish. But Deep In My Heart I Know That The Most Wretched Among You Have Seen A Divine Face Emerge From Their Darkness. That Is The Face You Are Asked To See.

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There Is Scarcely Any Passion Without Struggle.

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We Have To Live And Let Live In Order To Create What We Are.

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Morality, When Formal, Devours.

L'absurde Est La Notion Essentielle Et La Premie' Re Ve? Rite? . The Absurd Is The Fundamental Idea And The First Truth.

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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.

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In The World There Is, Parallel To The Force Of Death And Constraint, An Enormous Force Of Persuasion That Is Called Culture.

Greatness Consists In Trying To Be Great. There Is No Other Way.

I Am Too Much In Love With My Lies And Hypocrisies Not To Confess Them Fervently.

The Urge To Revolt Is One Of The Essential Dimensions Of Human Nature.

But - I Cannot Make A Choice. I Have My Own Sorrow, But I Suffer With Him, Too; I Share His Pain. I Understand All - That Is My Trouble.

It Is Better To Burn Than To Disappear.

Man Stands Face To Face With The Irrational. He Feels Within Him His Longing For Happiness And For Reason. The Absurd Is Born Of This Confrontation Between The Human Need And The Unreasonable Silence Of The World.

I Felt As I Hadn't Felt For Ages. I Had A Foolish Desire To Burst Into Tears. For The First Time I'd Realized How All These People Loathed Me.

Germany Collapsed As A Result Of Having Engaged In A Struggle For Empire With The Concepts Of Provincial Politics.

The Day When I Am No More Than A Writer I Shall Cease To Be A Writer.

Should I Kill Myself, Or Have A Cup Of Coffee?

Freedom Is Not A Reward Or A Decoration That You Toast In Champagne. On The Contrary, It's Hard Graft And A Long-distance Run, All Alone, Very Exhausting. Alone In A Dreary Room, Alone In The Dock Before The Judges, And Alone To Make Up Your Mind, Before Yourself And Before The Judgement Of Others. At The End Of Every Freedom There Is A Sentence, Which Is Why Freedom Is Too Heavy To Bear.

We Rarely Confide In Those Who Are Better Than We Are.

Retaliation Is Related To Nature And Instinct, Not To Law. Law, By Definition, Cannot Obey The Same Rules As Nature.

The Welfare Of The People In Particular Has Always Been The Alibi Of Tyrants.

This Absurd, Godless World Is, Then, Peopled With Men Who Think Clearly And Have Ceased To Hope. And I Have Not Yet Spoken Of The Most Absurd Character, Who Is The Creator.

I Was Born Poor And Without Religion, Under A Happy Sky, Feeling Harmony, Not Hostility, In Nature. I Began Not By Feeling Torn, But In Plenitude.

Indeed, Men Never Know How To Love. Nothing Satisfies Them. All They Know Is To Dream, To Imagine New Duties, To Look For New Countries And New Homes. While We Women, We Know That We Must Hasten To Love, To Share The Same Bed, Hold Hands, And Fear Absence. When We Women Love, We Dream Of Nothing.

For A Man Who Loves Power, Competition From The Gods Is Annoying. I Have Done Away With That. I Have Proven To These Illusory Godsthat A Man, If He Has The Will, Can Practice, Without Any Apprenticeship, Their Ridiculous Trade.

Those Who Prefer Their Principles Over Their Happiness, They Refuse To Be Happy Outside The Conditions They Seem To Have Attached To Their Happiness.

Happiness And Love

Whoever Today Speaks Of Human Existence In Terms Of Power, Efficiency, And Historical Tasks Is An Actual Or Potential Assassin.

Every Authentic Work Of Art Is A Gift Offered To The Future.

From The Evening Breeze To This Hand On My Shoulder, Everything Has Its Truth.

So All A Man Could Win In The Conflict Between Plague And Life Was Knowledge And Memories.

Those Who Love, Friends And Lovers, Know That Love Is Not Only A Blinding Flash, But Also A Long And Painful Struggle In The Darkness For The Realization Of Definitive Recognition And Reconciliation.

To Create Today Is To Create Dangerously. Any Publication Is An Act, And That Act Exposes One To The Passions Of An Age That Forgives Nothing.

Healthy People Have A Natural Skill Of Avoiding Feverish Eyes.

It Is Not True That The Heart Wears Out - But The Body Creates This Illusion.

I Am Just Coming Out Of Five Years Of Night, And This Orgy Of Violent Lights Gives Me For The First Time The Impression Of A New Continent. An Enormous, 50-foot High Camel Billboard : A Gi With His Mouth Wide Open Blows Enormous Puffs Of Real Smoke. So Much Bad Taste Hardly Seems Imaginable.

The Only Way To Deal With An Unfree World Is To Become So Absolutely Free That Your Very Existence Is An Act Of Rebellion.

A Symbol Always Transcends The One Who Makes Use Of It And Makes Him Say In Reality More Than He Is Aware Of Expressing.

The Mistake That Men Make Is That They Do Not Believe In Theater. Otherwise, They Would Know That Every Man Is Allowed To Play Thecelestial Tragedies And To Become God. All He Has To Do Is Harden His Heart.

We Always Deceive Ourselves Twice About The People We Love - First To Their Advantage, Then To Their Disadvantage.

Utopia Is That Which Is In Contradiction With Reality.

Slave Camps Under The Flag Of Freedom, Massacres Justified By Philanthropy Or The Taste Of The Superhuman, Cripple Judgment. On The Day When Crime Puts On The Apparel Of Innocence, Through A Curious Reversal Peculiar To Our Age, It Is Innocence That Is Called On To Justify Itself. The Purpose Of This Essay Is To Accept And Study That Strange Challenge.

He Was Expressing His Certainty That My Appeal Would Be Granted, But I Was Carrying The Burden Of A Sin From Which I Had To Free Myself. According To Him, Human Justice Was Nothing And Divine Justice Was Everything. I Pointed Out It Was The Former That Had Condemned Me.

If We Believe In Nothing, If Nothing Has Any Meaning And If We Can Affirm No Values Whatsoever, Then Everything Is Possible And Nothing Has Any Importance.

Some Are Created To Love, While The Others - To Live.

The Realization That Life Is Absurd Cannot Be An End, But Only A Beginning.

The Four Conditions Of Happiness: Life In The Open Air, Love For Another Being,freedom From Ambition,creation

I Grew Up With The Sea, And Poverty For Me Was Sumptuous; Then I Lost The Sea And Found All Luxuries Gray And Poverty Unbearable.

You Will Never Live If You Are Looking For The Meaning Of Life.

When I Look At My Life And Its Secret Colors, I Feel Like Bursting Into Tears.

One Recognizes One's Course By Discovering The Paths That Stray From It.

There Is But One Freedom, To Put Oneself Right With Death. After That Everything Is Possible.

Modern Conquerors Can Kill, But Do Not Seem To Be Able To Create. Artists Know How To Create But Cannot Really Kill. Murderers Are Only Very Exceptionally Found Among Artists.

I Cling Like A Miser To The Freedom That Disappears As Soon As There Is An Excess Of Things.

What, Then, Is That Incalculable Feeling That Deprives The Mind Of The Sleep Necessary To Life? A World That Can Be Explained Even With Bad Reasons Is A Familiar World. But, On The Other Hand, In A Universe Suddenly Divested Of Illusions And Lights, Man Feels An Alien, A Stranger. His Exile Is Without Remedy Since He Is Deprived Of The Memory Of A Lost Home Or The Hope Of A Promised Land. This Divorce Between Man And His Life, The Actor And His Setting, Is Properly The Feeling Of Absurdity.

Maman Used To Say That You Can Always Find Something To Be Happy About. In My Prison, When The Sky Turned Red And A New Day Slipped Into My Cell, I Found Out That She Was Right.

Absolute Justice Is Achieved By The Suppression Of All Contradiction, Therefore It Destroys Freedom.

Happiness Implied A Choice, And Within That Choice A Concerted Will, A Lucid Desire.

... Unhappiness Is Like Marriage. We Believe We Chose It, But Then It Is Choosing Us. That Is How It Is, We Can Do Nothing About It.

Of Course, True Love Is Exceptional - Two Or Three Times A Century, More Or Less. The Rest Of The Time There Is Vanity Or Boredom.

For Years I've Wanted To Live According To Everyone Else's Morals. I've Forced Myself To Live Like Everyone Else, To Look Like Everyone Else. I Said What Was Necessary To Join Together, Even When I Felt Separate. And After All Of This, Catastrophe Came. Now I Wander Amid The Debris, I Am Lawless, Torn To Pieces, Alone And Accepting To Be So, Resigned To My Singularity And To My Infirmities. And I Must Rebuild A Truth-after Having Lived All My Life In A Sort Of Lie.

To Stay Or To Go, It Amounted To The Same Thing.

One Grows Out Of Pity When It's Useless.

Truth, Like Light, Blinds. Falsehood, On The Contrary, Is A Beautiful Twilight That Enhances Every Object.

Great Ideas Come Into The World As Gently As Doves.

For The Existentials, Negation Is Their God. To Be Precise, That God Is Maintained Only Through The Negation Of Human Reason. But, Like Suicides, Gods Change With Men.

What Will Be Left Of The Power Of Example If It Is Proved That Capital Punishment Has Another Power, And A Very Real One, Which Degrades Men To The Point Of Shame, Madness, And Murder?

I Would Like To Be Able To Breathe— To Be Able To Love Her By Memory Or Fidelity. But My Heart Aches. I Love You Continuously, Intensely.

Nothing Can Discourage The Appetite For Divinity In The Heart Of Man.

Tout Re Volutionnaire Finit En Oppresseur Ou En He Re Tique. Every Revolutionary Ends As An Oppressor Or A Heretic.

And For All His Life It Would Be Kindness And Love That Made Him Cry, Never Pain Or Persecution, Which On The Contrary Only Reinforced His Spirit And His Resolution.

A Novel Is Never Anything But A Philosophy Expressed In Images. And In A Good Novel The Philosophy Has Disappeared Into The Images.

If Only Nature Is Real And If, In Nature, Only Desire And Destruction Are Legitimate, Then, In That All Humanity Does Not Suffice To Assuage The Thirst For Blood, The Path Of Destruction Must Lead To Universal Annihilation.

People Believe A Man Is In Distress Because His Loved One Dies In One Day. But His Real Pain Is Less Futile: It Is That He Finds Out That Sadness Too Does Not Last. Even Pain Has No Meaning.

The Most Eloquent Eulogy Of Capitalism Was Made By Its Greatest Enemy. Marx Is Only Anti-capitalist In So Far As Capitalism Is Out Of Date.

There Are Means That Cannot Be Excused. And I Should Like To Be Able To Love My Country And Still Love Justice. I Don't Want Just Any Greatness For It, Particularly A Greatness Born Of Blood And Falsehood. I Want To Keep It Alive By Keeping Justice Alive.

No Matter How The Sun Shone, The Sea Held Forth No More Promises.

We Turn Our Backs On Nature; We Are Ashamed Of Beauty. Our Wretched Tragedies Have A Smell Of The Office Clinging To Them, And The Blood That Trickles From Them Is The Color Of Printer's Ink.

Because,' Cormery Went On, 'when I Was Very Young, Very Foolish, And Very Much Alone ... You Paid Attention To Me And, Without Seeming To, You Opened For Me The Door To Everything I Love In The World.

They Came To Know The Incorrigible Sorrow Of All Prisoners And Exiles, Which Is To Live In Company With A Memory That Serves No Purpose.

People Have Played On Words And Pretended To Believe That Refusing To Grant A Meaning To Life Necessarily Leads To Declaring That It Is Not Worth Living. In Truth, There Is No Necessary Common Measure Between These Two Judgments.

The Principle Can Be Established That For A Man Who Does Not Cheat What He Believes To Be True Must Determine His Actions.

That's Love, Giving Everything, Sacrificing All Without Hope Of Return.

There Are Always Reasons For Murdering A Man. But There Is No Justification For His Existence.

This Very Heart Which Is Mine Will Forever Remain Indefinable To Me. Between The Certainty I Have Of My Existence And The Content I Try To Give To That Assurance, The Gap Will Never Be Filled. Forever I Shall Be A Stranger To Myself.

To Live Is In Itself A Value Judgment. To Breathe Is To Judge.

After All Manner Of Professors Have Done Their Best For Us, The Place We Are To Get Knowledge Is In Books. The True University Of These Days Is A Collection Of Books.

Thus I Draw From The Absurd Three Consequences, Which Are My Revolt, My Freedom, And My Passion. By The Mere Activity Of Consciousness I Transform Into A Rule Of Life What Was An Invitation To Death—and I Refuse Suicide.

Here Lives A Free Man. Nobody Serves Him.

Every Time I Hear A Political Speech Or I Read Those Of Our Leaders, I Am Horrified At Having, For Years, Heard Nothing Which Sounded Human. It Is Always The Same Words Telling The Same Lies.

False Judges Are Held Up In The World's Admiration And I Alone Know The True Ones.

What Is Human In Me Is Not What Is Best In Me. What Is Human In Me Is That I Desire, And To Obtain What I Desire, I Believe I Would Crush Anything That Stood In My Way.

I Was Tormented By My Desire For A Woman ... I Thought So Much About A Woman, About Women, About All The Ones I Had Known, About All The Circumstances In Which I Had Enjoyed Them, That My Cell Would Be Filled With Their Faces And Crowded With My Desires.

The Rebel Can Never Find Peace. He Knows What Is Good And, Despite Himself, Does Evil. The Value Which Supports Him Is Never Given To Him Once And For All - He Must Fight To Uphold It, Unceasingly.

From The Moment Absurdity Is Recognized, It Becomes A Passion, The Most Harrowing Of All. But Whether Or Not One Can Live With One's Passions, Whether Or Not One Can Accept Their Law, Which Is To Burn The Heart They Simultaneously Exalt - That Is The Whole Question.

Nothing Is More Despicable Than Respect Based On Fear.

Happiness And The Absurd Are Two Sons Of The Same Earth. They Are Inseparable. It Would Be A Mistake To Say That Happiness Necessarily Springs From The Absurd Discovery. It Happens As Well That The Felling Of The Absurd Springs From Happiness. "i Conclude That All Is Well," Says Oedipus, And That Remark Is Sacred. It Echoes In The Wild And Limited Universe Of Man. It Teaches That All Is Not, Has Not Been, Exhausted. It Drives Out Of This World A God Who Had Come Into It With Dissatisfaction And A Preference For Futile Suffering. It Makes Of Fate A Human Matter, Which Must Be Settled Among Men.

Politics And The Fate Of Mankind Are Formed By Men Without Ideals And Without Greatness. Those Who Have Greatness Within Them Do Not Go In For Politics.

No Longer Were There Individual Destinies; Only A Collective Destiny, Made Of Plague And Emotions Shared By All.

There Are Some Individuals Who Have Too Strong A Craving, A Will, And A Nostalgia For Happiness Ever To Reach It. They Always Retain A Bitter And Passionate Aftertaste, And That's The Best They Can Hope For.

I Longed To Be Forgotten In Order To Be Able To Complain To Myself.

Those Who Lack The Courage Will Always Find A Philosophy To Justify It.

A Man Wants To Earn Money In Order To Be Happy, And His Whole Effort And The Best Of A Life Are Devoted To The Earning Of That Money. Happiness Is Forgotten; The Means Are Taken For The End.

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