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When The Throne Of God Is Overturned, The Rebel Realizes That It Is Now His Own Responsibility To Create The Justice, Order, And Unity That He Sought In Vain Within His Own Condition, And In This Way To Justify The Fall Of God. Then Begins The Desperate Effort To Create, At The Price Of Crime And Murder If Necessary, The Dominion Of Man.

-Albert Camus

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When The Throne Of

Albert Camus

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When The Throne Of God Is Overturned, The Rebel Realizes That It Is Now His Own Responsibility To Create The Justice, Order, And Unity That He Sought In Vain Within His Own Condition, And In This Way To Justify The Fall Of God. Then Begins The Desperate Effort To Create, At The Price Of Crime And Murder If Necessary, The Dominion Of Man.

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

A Man's Work Is Nothing But This Slow Trek To Rediscover, Through The Detours Of Art, Those Two Or Three Great And Simple Images In Whose Presence His Heart First Opened.

Accept Life, Take It As It Is? Stupid. The Means Of Doing Otherwise? Far From Our Having To Take It, It Is Life That Possesses Us And On Occasion Shuts Our Mouths.

It Is A Well-known Fact That We Always Recognize Our Homeland At The Moment We Are About To Lose It.

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.

Liberty Is Dangerous, As Hard To Get Along With As It Is Exciting.

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

... 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.

The Only Real Progress Lies In Learning To Be Wrong All Alone.

I Don't Want To Be A Genius-i Have Enough Problems Just Trying To Be A Man.

Je Puis Nier Une Chose Sans Me Croire Obligé De La Salir Ou De Retirer Aux Autres Le Droit D'y Croire.

I See Many People Die Because They Judge That Life Is Not Worth Living. I See Others Paradoxically Getting Killed For The Ideas Or Illusions That Give Them A Reason For Living (what Is Called A Reason For Living Is Also An Excellent Reason For Dying). I Therefore Conclude That The Meaning Of Life Is The Most Urgent Of Questions.

And Real Nobility (that Of The Heart) Is Based On Scorn, Courage, And Profound Indifference.

I Have Always Thought It Would Be Easier To Redeem A Man Steeped In Vice And Crime Than A Greedy, Narrow-minded, Pitiless Merchant.

All I Maintain Is That On This Earth There Are Pestilences And There Are Victims, And It's Up To Us, So Far As Possible, Not To Join Forces With The Pestilences. That May Sound Simple To The Point Of Childishness; I Can't Judge If It's Simple, But I Know It's True.

It Is Immoral Not To Tell.

God Is Not Necessary To Create Culpability, Or To Punish. Our Fellow Men Are Enough For That, Helped By Ourselves.

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.

...the Habit Of Despair Is Worse Than Despair Itself.

In The Light, The Earth Remains Our First And Our Last Love. Our Brothers Are Breathing Under The Same Sky As We; Justice Is A Living Thing. Now Is Born That Strange Joy Which Helps One Live And Die, And Which We Shall Never Again Postpone To A Later Time.

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.

Happiness Is Not Everything And Men Have Their Duties. Mine Is To Find My Mother, A Homeland

God Put Self-pity By The Side Of Despair Like The Cure By The Side Of The Disease.

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

Mistakes Are Joyful, Truth Infernal.

Ah Cher Ami, How Poor In Invention Men Are! They Are They Always Think One Commits Suicide For A Reason. But It's Quite Possible To Commit Suicide For Two Reasons. No, That Never Occurs To Them. So What's The Good Of Dying Intentionally, Of Sacrificing Yourself To The Idea You Want People To Have Of You? Once You Are Dead, They Will Take Advantage Of It To Attribute Idiotic Or Vulgar Motives To Your Action. Martyrs, Cher Ami, Must Choose Between Being Forgotten, Mocked, Or Made Use Of. As For Being Understood--never!

Human Relationships Always Help Us To Carry On Because They Always Presuppose A Future.

Man Is The Only Creature That Refuses To Be What He Is.

The Kingdom Of Heaven Will, In Fact, Appear On Earth , But It Will Be Ruled Over By Men A Mere Handful To Begin With, Who Will Be The Cassars, Because They Were The First To Understand And Later, With Time, By All Men.

There Is No Sun Without Shadow, And It Is Essential To Know The Night.

Life Is The Sum Of Your Choices.

To Assert In Any Case That A Man Must Be Absolutely Cut Off From Society Because He Is Absolutely Evil Amounts To Saying That Society Is Absolutely Good, And No-one In His Right Mind Will Believe This Today.

What, In Fact, Is A Novel But A Universe In Which Action Is Endowed With Form, Where Final Words Are Pronounced, Where People Possess One Another Completely, And Where Life Assumes The Aspect Of Destiny?

Realism Should Only Be The Means Of Expression Of Religious Genius... Or, At The Other Extreme, The Artistic Expressions Of Monkeys Which Are Quite Satisfied With Mere Imitation. In Fact, Art Is Never Realistic Though Sometimes It Is Tempted To Be. To Be Really Realistic A Description Would Have To Be Endless.

The Great Courage Is To Stare As Squarely At The Light As At Death.

…there's No Question Of Heroism In All This. It's A Matter Of Common Decency. That's An Idea Which May Make Some People Smile, But The Only Means Of Fighting A Plague Is - Common Decency.

Women Are All We Know Of Paradise On This Earth.

That's The Way Man Is, Cher Monsieur. He Has Two Faces: He Can't Love Without Self-love.

And So I Learned That Familiar Paths Traced In The Dusk Of Summer Evenings May Lead As Well To Prison As To Innocent Untroubled Sleep.

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.

Mother Died Today. Or Maybe Yesterday; I Can't Be Sure.

I Have A Good, Hearty Laugh And An Energetic Handshake, And Those Are Trump Cards.

I Was Always Able To Understand My Friend Who Decided To Quit Smoking And Who, Through An Effort Of Will, Succeeded In Doing So. One Morning, He Opened The Newspaper, Read That The First H- Bomb Had Exploded, Found Out About The Bomb's Admirable Effects And Went Straight To The Tobacconist's.

If Christianity Is Pessimistic As To Man, It Is Optimistic As To Human Destiny. Well, I Can Say That, Pessimistic As To Human Destiny, I Am Optimistic As To Man.

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.

There Are Crimes Of Passion And Crimes Of Logic. The Boundary Between Them Is Not Clearly Defined.

Crime Too Is A Form Of Solitude, Even If One Thousand Get Together To Commit It. And It Is Right For Me To Die Alone, After Having Lived And Killed Alone.

A True Masterpiece Does Not Tell Everything.

Imagination Offers People Consolation For What They Cannot Be, And Humor For What They Actually Are.

Find Your Happiness In Yourself.

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.

And Indeed It Could Be Said That Once The Faintest Stirring Of Hope Became Possible, The Dominion Of Plague Was Ended.

To Feel Absolutely Right Is The Beginning Of The End.

It's Better To Bet On This Life Than On The Next.

Lying Is Not Only Saying What Isn't True. It Is Also, In Fact Especially, Saying More Than Is True And, In The Case Of The Human Heart, Saying More Than One Feels. We All Do It, Every Day, To Make Life Simpler.

A Man Who Has Become Conscious Of The Absurd Is For Ever Bound To It.

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

The Only Conception Of Freedom I Can Have Is That Of The Prisoner Or The Individual In The Midst Of The State. The Only One I Know Is Freedom Of Thought And Action.

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

I Do Not Have Much Liking For The Too Famous Existential Philosophy, And, To Tell The Truth, I Think Its Conclusions False.

Telling The Truth

The Most Exhausting Effort In My Life Has Been To Suppress My Own Nature In Order To Make It Serve My Biggest Plans.

Don't Believe Your Friends When They Ask You To Be Honest With Them. All They Really Want Is To Be Maintained In The Good Opinion They Have Of Themselves.

In Order To Understand The World, One Has To Turn Away From It On Occasion; In Order To Serve Others Better, One Has To Hold Them At A Distance For A Time. But Where Can One Find The Solitude Necessary To Vigor, The Deep Breath In Which The Mind Collects Itself And Courage Gauges Its Strength? There Remain Big Cities.

Sometimes, From Beyond The Skycrapers, The Cry Of A Tugboat Finds You In Your Insomnia, And You Remember That This Desert Of Iron And Cement Is An Island.

We're All Special Cases.

Every Ideology Is Contrary To Human Psychology.

Freedom Is Not A Reward Or A Decoration That Is Celebrated With Champagne...oh No! It's A...long Distance Race, Quite Solitary And Very Exhausting.

Autumn Is A Second Spring When Every Leaf Is A Flower.

He Had Been Bored, That's All, Bored Like Most People. Hence He Had Made Himself Out Of Whole Cloth A Life Full Of Complications And Drama. Something Must Happen - And That Explains Most Human Commitments. Something Must Happen, Even Loveless Slavery, Even War Or Death. Hurray Then For Funerals!

The Byronic Hero, Incapable Of Love, Or Capable Only Of An Impossible Love, Suffers Endlessly. He Is Solitary, Languid, His Condition Exhausts Him. If He Wants To Feel Alive, It Must Be In The Terrible Exaltation Of A Brief And Destructive Action.

Moreover, Most People, Assuming They Had Not Altogether Abandoned Religious Observances, Or Did Not Combine Them Naively With A Thoroughly Immoral Way Of Living, Had Replace Normal Religious Practice By More Or Less Extravagant Superstitions.

Some Cry: 'love Me!!' Others: 'don't Love Me!!' But A Certain Genus, The Worst And Most Unhappy, Cries: 'don't Love Me And Be Faithful To Me!!'

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.

Ironic Philosophies Produce Passionate Works.

The Struggle To The Top Alone Will Make A Human Heart Swell.

There Can Be No True Goodness, Nor True Love, Without The Utmost Clear-sightedness.

A Free Press Can, Of Course, Be Good Or Bad, But, Most Certainly Without Freedom, The Press Will Never Be Anything But Bad.

Where There Is No Hope, We Must Invent It.

In The End, We Would Like Not To Be Guilty While At The Same Time Being Dispensed Of The Effort Of Purifying Ourselves. Not Enough Cynicism And Not Enough Virtue.

But, You Know, I Feel More Fellowship With The Defeated Than With Saints. Heroism And Sanctity Don't Really Appeal To Me, I Imagine. What Interests Me Is Being A Man.

I Continue To Believe That This World Has No Ultimate Meaning. But I Know That Something In It Has A Meaning And That Is Man, Because He Is The Only Creature To Insist On Having One

If Absolute Truth Belongs To Anyone In This World, It Certainly Does Not Belong To The Man Or Party That Claims To Possess It.

What Is A Rebel? A Man Who Says No: But Whose Refusal Does Not Imply A Renunciation.

I Am Alive Again, Now That I Can No Longer Stand To Live.

There Is In Me An Anarchy And Frightful Disorder. Creating Makes Me Die A Thousand Deaths, Because It Means Making Order, And My Entire Being Rebels Against Order. But Without It I Would Die, Scattered To The Winds.

Great Feelings Take With Them Their Own Universe, Splendid Or Abject. They Light Up With Their Passion An Exclusive World In Which They Recognize Their Climate.

The Danger Of Lectures Is That They Create The Illusion Of Teaching For Teachers, And The Illusion Of Learning For Learners.

We All Carry Within Us Places Of Exile, Our Crimes, Our Ravages. Our Task Is Not To Unleash Them On The World; It Is To Transform Them In Ourselves And Others.

To Those Who Despair Of Everything Reason Cannot Provide A Faith, But Only Passion, And In This Case It Must Be The Same Passion That Lay At The Root Of The Despair, Namely Humiliation And Hatred.

The End Of Their Passion Consists Of Loving Uselessly At The Moment When It Is Pointless.

Happiness And Love

The Modern Mind Is In Complete Disarray. Knowledge Has Stretched Itself To The Point Where Neither The World Nor Our Intelligence Can Find Any Foot-hold. It Is A Fact That We Are Suffering From Nihilism.

I Can Negate Everything Of That Part Of Me That Lives On Vague Nostalgias, Except This Desire For Unity, This Longing To Solve, This Need For Clarity And Cohesion. I Can Refute Everything In This World Surrounding Me That Offends Or Enraptures Me, Except This Chaos, This Sovereign Chance And This Divine Equivalence Which Springs From Anarchy. I Don't Know Whether This World Has Meaning That Transcends It. But I Know That I Do Not Know That Meaning And That It Is Impossible For Me Just Now To Know It. What Can A Meaning Outside My Condition Mean To Me? I Can Understand Only In Human Terms.

The Contradiction Is This: Man Rejects The World As It Is, Without Accepting The Necessity Of Escaping It. In Fact, Men Cling To The World And By Far The Majority Do Not Want To Abandon It.

The First Progressive Step For A Mind Overwhelmed By The Strangeness Of Things Is To Realize That This Feeling Of Strangeness Is Shared With All Men And That Human Reality, In Its Entirety, Suffers From The Distance Which Separates It From The Rest Of The Universe.

Do Not Be Surprised. I Do Not Like Writers And I Cannot Stand Their Lies. They Speak So As Not To Listen To Themselves Speak. If They Did Listen, They Would Know That They Are Nothing And Then They Would No Longer Be Able To Speak.

Existence Is Illusory And It Is Eternal.

All Healthy Men Have Thought Of Their Own Suicide

To Me, Art Is Not A Solitary Delight. It Is A Means Of Stirring The Greatest Number Of Men By Providing Them With A Privileged Image Of Our Common Joys And Woes.

I Leave Sisyphus At The Foot Of The Mountain. One Always Finds One's Burden Again. But Sisyphus Teaches The Higher Fidelity That Negates The Gods And Raises Rocks. He Too Concludes That All Is Well. This Universe Henceforth Without A Master Seems To Him Neither Sterile Nor Futile. Each Atom Of That Stone, Each Mineral Flake Of That Night-filled Mountain, In Itself, Forms A World. The Struggle Itself Toward The Heights Is Enough To Fill A Man's Heart. One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy.

Everything Considered, A Determined Soul Will Always Manage.

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?

The Truth Is That Every Intelligent Man, As You Know, Dreams Of Being A Gangster And Of Ruling Over Society By Force Alone. As It Is Not So Easy As The Detective Novels Might Lead One To Believe, One Generally Relies On Politics And Joins The Cruelest Party.what Does It Matter, After All, If By Humiliating One's Mind One Succeeds In Dominating Every One? I Discovered In Myself Sweet Dreams Of Oppression.

The Main Thing Is That Everything Become Simple, Easy Enough For A Child To Understand.

Poverty, First Of All Was Never A Misfortune For Me; It Was Radiant With Sunlight.. I Owe It To My Family, First Of All, Who Lacked Everything And Who Envied Practically Nothing.

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

Happiness And Love

There Is A Life And There Is A Death, And There Are Beauty And Melancholy Between.

Yes, Everything Is Simple. It's People Who Complicate Things.

... Man Has An Idea Of A Better World Than This. But Better Does Not Mean Different, It Means Unified... Religion Or Crime, Every Human Endeavor In Fact, Finally Obeys This Unreasonabledesire And Claims To Give Life A Form It Does Not Have.

Charm Is A Way Of Getting The Answer 'yes' Without Asking A Clear Question.

Man Is An Idea, And A Precious Small Idea Once He Turns His Back On Love.

Precious Stones

Obstinacy Alone Is Not A Virtue.

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?

Martyrs, My Friend, Have To Choose Between Being Forgotten, Mocked Or Used. As For Being Understood - Never.

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.

Nobody Realizes That Some People Expend Tremendous Energy Merely To Be Normal.

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

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

My Dear, In The Midst Of Hate, I Found There Was, Within Me, An Invincible Love. In The Midst Of Tears, I Found There Was, Within Me, An Invincible Smile. In The Midst Of Chaos, I Found There Was, Within Me, An Invincible Calm. I Realized, Through It All, That… 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. Truly Yours, Albert Camus

There Are More Things To Admire In Men Than To Despise.

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.

I Hope The Dogs Don't Bark Tonight. I Always Think It's Mine

There Are Causes Worth Dying For, But None Worth Killing For.

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

If The World Were Clear, Art Would Not Exist.

When The Throne Of God Is Overturned, The Rebel Realizes That It Is Now His Own Responsibility To Create The Justice, Order, And Unity That He Sought In Vain Within His Own Condition, And In This Way To Justify The Fall Of God. Then Begins The Desperate Effort To Create, At The Price Of Crime And Murder If Necessary, The Dominion Of Man.

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

We Are Not So Mad As To Think That We Shall Create A World In Which Murder Will Not Occur. We Are Fighting For A World In Which Murder Will No Longer Be Legal.

Like Great Works, Deep Feelings Always Mean More Than They Are Conscious Of Saying.

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.

Man Is Always Prey To His Truths. Once He Has Admitted Them, He Cannot Free Himself From Them.

One Might Think, That A Period Which, Within Fifty Years, Uproots, Enslaves Or Kills Seventy Million Human Beings, Should Only, And Forthwith, Be Condemned. But Also Its Guilt Must Be Understood.

Today We Are Always As Ready To Judge As We Are To Fornicate.

He's Incapable Of Suffering For A Long Time, Or Being Happy For A Long Time. Which Means That He's Incapable Of Anything Really Worth While.

True Debauchery Is Liberating Because It Creates No Obligations. In It You Possess Only Yourself, Hence It Remains The Favorite Pastime Of The Great Lovers Of Their Own Person.

The Innocent Is The Person Who Explains Nothing

It Is Better To Burn Than To Disappear.

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

I Sometimes Need To Write Things Which I Cannot Completely Control But Which Therefore Prove That What Is In Me Is Stronger Than I Am.

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

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

If You Keep On Excusing, You Eventually Give Your Blessing To The Slave Camp, To Cowardly Force, To Organized Executioners, To The Cynicism Of Great Political Monsters; You Finally Hand Over Your Brothers.

The First Choice An Artist Makes Is Precisely To Be An Artist, And If He Chooses To Be An Artist It Is In Consideration Of What He Is Himself And Because Of A Certain Idea He Has Of Art

Having Money Is A Way Of Being Free Of Money.

There Is No Longer A Single Idea Explaining Everything, But An Infinite Number Of Essences Giving A Meaning To An Infinite Number Of Objects. The World Comes To A Stop, But Also Lights Up.

We All Have A Weakness For Beauty.

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.

Suffering Gives Us No Special Rights.

The Desire For Possession Is Insatiable, To Such A Point That It Can Survive Even Love Itself. To Love, Therefore, Is To Sterilize The Person One Loves.

Man Cannot Do Without Beauty, And This Is What Our Era Pretends To Want To Disregard.

She Was Waiting, But She Didn't Know For What. She Was Aware Only Of Her Solitude, And Of The Penetrating Cold, And Of A Greater Weight In The Region Of Her Heart.

The Nobility Of Our Calling Will Always Be Rooted In Two Commitments Difficult To Observe: Refusal To Lie About What We Know, And Resistance To Oppression.

If It Adapts Itself To What The Majority Of Our Society Wants, Art Will Be A Meaningless Recreation.

Mostly, I Could Tell, I Made Him Feel Uncomfortable. He Didn't Understand Me, And He Was Sort Of Holding It Against Me. I Felt The Urge To Reassure Him That I Was Like Everybody Else, Just Like Everybody Else. But Really There Wasn't Much Point, And I Gave Up The Idea Out Of Laziness.

It Should Be Pointed Out For Our Own Guidance In The West That The Continual Signing Of Manifestoes And Protests Is One Of The Surest Ways Of Undermining The Efficacy And Dignity Of The Intellectual. There Exists A Permanent Blackmail That We All Know And That We Must Have The Often Solitary Courage To Resist.

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.

Rule: Start By Looking For What Is Valid In Every Man.

I Spent A Long Time Looking At Faces, Drinking In Smiles. Am I Happy Or Unhappy? It’s Not A Very Important Question. I Live With Such Frenzied Intensity. Things And People Are Waiting For Me, And Doubtless I Am Waiting For Them And Desiring Them With All My Strength And Sadness. But, Here, I Earn The Right To Be Alive By Silence And By Secrecy. The Miracle Of Not Having To Talk About Oneself.

We Turn Toward God Only To Obtain The Impossible.

Fate Is Not In Man But Around Him

What Would Become Of The World If The Condemned Started To Confide Their Heartaches To The Executioners?

For What Gives Value To Travel Is Fear. It Breaks Down A Kind Of Inner Structure We Have. Travel Robs Us Of Such Refuge. Far From Our Own People, Our Own Language, Stripped Of All Our Props, Deprived Of Our Masks (one Doesn't Know The Fare On The Streetcars, Or Anything Else), We Are Completely On The Surface Of Ourselves.

Many Fledgling Moralists In Those Days Were Going About Our Town Proclaiming There Was Nothing To Be Done About It And We Should Bow To The Inevitable. And Tarrou, Rieux, And Their Friends Might Give One Answer Or Another, But Its Conclusion Was Always The Same, Their Certitude That A Fight Must Be Put Up, In This Way Or That, And There Must Be No Bowing Down... There Was Nothing Admirable About This Attitude; It Was Merely Logical.

The Important Thing Isn't The Soundness Or Otherwise Of The Argument, But For It To Make You Think.

And It Was Like Knocking Four Quick Times On The Door Of Unhappiness.

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

Proof Is Never Definitive, After All; One Has To Begin Again With Each New Person.

For If I Try To Seize This Self Of Which I Feel Sure, If I Try To Define And To Summarize It, It Is Nothing But Water Slipping Through My Fingers.

Virtue Cannot Separate Itself From Reality Without Becoming A Principle Of Evil.

To Begin With, Poor People´s Memory Is Less Nourished Than That Of A Rich; It Has Fewer Landmarks In Space Because They Seldom Leave The Place Where They Live, And Fewer Reference Points In Time Throughtout Lives That Are Grey And Featureless.

A Craving For Freedom And Independence Is Generated Only In A Man Still Living On Hope.

Beauty Is Unbearable, Drives Us To Despair, Offering Us For A Minute The Glimpse Of An Eternity That We Should Like To Stretch Out Over The Whole Of Time.

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

The Absurd Has Meaning Only In So Far As It Is Not Agreed To.

One Cannot Be A Part-time Nihilist.

Life Is A Story And God Is Author.life Is Absurd.i Think So.

There May Be Responsible Persons, But There Are No Guilty Ones.

At The Heart Of All Beauty Lies Something Inhuman, And These Hills, The Softness Of The Sky, The Outline Of These Trees At This Very Minute Lose The Illusory Meaning With Which We Had Clothed Them, Henceforth More Remote Than A Lost Paradise . . . That Denseness And That Strangeness Of The World Is Absurd.

In Normal Times All Of Us Know, Whether Consciously Or Not, That There Is No Love Which Can't Be Bettered; Nevertheless, We Reconcile Ourselves More Or Less Easily To The Fact That Ours Has Never Risen Above The Average.

But Too Many People Now Climb Onto The Cross Merely To Be Seen From A Greater Distance, Even If They Have To Trample Somewhat On The One Who Has Been There So Long.

Men Cry Because Things Are Not What They Ought To Be.

Accepting The Absurdity Of Everything Around Us Is One Step, A Necessary Experience: It Should Not Become A Dead End. It Arouses A Revolt That Can Become Fruitful

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.

The Gods Had Condemned Sisyphus To Ceaselessly Rolling A Rock To The Top Of A Mountain, Whence The Stone Would Fall Back Of Its Own Weight. They Had Thought With Some Reason That There Is No More Dreadful Punishment Than Futile And Hopeless Labor.

On Good Days, If You Trust Life, Life Has To Answer You.

Every Act Of Rebellion Expresses A Nostalgia For Innocence And An Appeal To The Essence Of Being.

None Of The Evils Which Totalitarianism ... Claims To Remedy Is Worse Than Totalitarianism Itself.

Creating Is Living Doubly. The Groping, Anxious Quest Of A Proust, His Meticulous Collecting Of Flowers, Of Wallpapers, And Of Anxieties, Signifies Nothing Else.

The Laws Of Nature May Be Operative Up To A Certain Limit, Beyond Which They Turn Against Themselves To Give Birth To The Absurd.

Every Man Needs Slaves Like He Needs Clean Air. To Rule Is To Breathe, Is It Not? And Even The Most Disenfranchised Get To Breathe. The Lowest On The Social Scale Have Their Spouses Or Their Children.

...there Was Only One Thing That Interested Her And That Was Getting Into Bed With Men Whenever She'd The Chance. And I Warned Her Straight. 'you'll Be Sorry One Day, My Girl, And Wish You'd Got Me Back'.

I Want To Know If I Can Live With What I Know, And Only Than.

In A Universe Suddenly Divested Of Illusion 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.

Because There Is Nothing Here Than Invites Us To Cherish Unhappy Lovers. Nothing Is More Vain Than To Die For Love. What We Ought To Do Is Live.

Each Generation Doubtless Feels Called Upon To Reform The World. Mine Knows That It Will Not Reform It, But Its Task Is Perhaps Even Greater. It Consists In Preventing The World From Destroying Itself.

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.

In Fact, Other People Create For Lack Of Power. I, On The Other Hand, Do Not Need A Work: I Live.

Truth, Like Light Is Dazzling. By Contrast, Untruth Is A Beautiful Sunset That Enhances Everything.

Travel, Which Is Like A Greater And A Graver Science, Brings Us Back To Ourselves.

After All, Every Murderer When He Kills Runs The Risk Of The Most Dreadful Of Deaths, Whereas Those Who Kill Him Risk Nothing Except Promotion.

There Can Be No Question Of Masking The Evidence, Of Suppressing The Absurd By Denying One Of The Terms Of Its Equation. It Is Essential To Know Whether One Can Live With It Or Whether, On The Other Hand, Logic Commands One To Die Of It.

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Henepola Gunaratana

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