The Myth Of Sisyphus And Other Essays Quotes
"The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth."
"Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better."
"The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart."
"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide."
"I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again."
"To work and create 'for nothing,' to love without reward, is the secret of great art."
"The absurd hero's refusal to hope becomes his singular ability to live in the present with passion."
"There is not love of life without despair about life."
"The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world."
"At any streetcorner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face."
"The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone."
"Belief in the absurdity of existence must then dictate his conduct."
"Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present."
"By the mere activity of consciousness I transform into a rule of life what was an invitation to death—and I refuse suicide."
"Obeying the flame is both the easiest and the hardest thing to do."
"There is but one moral code that the absurd man can accept, the one that is not separated from God: the one that is dictated."
"The absurd mind cannot so much expect ethical rules at the end of its reasoning as, rather, illustrations and the breath of human lives."
"A man’s failures imply judgment, not of circumstances, but of himself."
"The absurd man multiplies here again what he cannot unify."
"There is no noble love but that which recognizes itself to be both short-lived and exceptional."
"I condemn that nature which, with such impudent nerve, brought me into being in order to suffer—I condemn it to be annihilated with me."
"Everything that makes man work and get excited utilizes hope."
"In the absurd world the value of a notion or of a life is measured by its sterility."
"A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing."
"Whichever way you turned, you seemed to be breathing water, to be drinking the air."
"I had fled Europe’s night, the winter of faces."
"To return to the sites of one’s youth and try to relive at forty what one loved or keenly enjoyed at twenty."
"Disoriented, walking through the wet, solitary countryside, I tried at least to recapture that strength."
"Empires were tumbling down; nations and men were tearing at one another’s throats; our hands were soiled."
"Originally innocent without knowing it, we were now guilty without meaning to be."
"In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer."
"There is merely bad luck in not being loved; there is misfortune in not loving."
"Violence and hatred dry up the heart itself."
"Life is spent in trying to recapture that ardor and that illumination."
"There is no love without a little innocence."
"One has to take a stand, be either for or against."
"If we are not artists in our language first of all, what sort of artists are we?"
"We must simultaneously serve suffering and beauty."
"Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle."