I regret having to play the role of Cassandra once more and having to disappoint the fresh hopes of certain ever hopeful colleagues, but there is no possible evolution in a totalitarian society.
Here I understand what is meant by glory: the right to love without limits. There is only one love in this world. To clasp a woman’s body is also to hold in one’s arms this strange joy that descends from sky to sea.
I have a liking for energy and conquests. But I soon tire of what I have obtained. This is my great weakness.
If a man can’t help having slaves, isn’t it better for him to call them free men?
The moment when I am no longer more than a writer, I will cease to write.
Karena bagiku, mencintai hidup tidak berarti bermain-main di pantai. Mencintai hidup, berarti menjalani hidup yang mempesona dan tidak terkendali. Bertindak, berusaha, bersusah payah. Hidup yang penuh semangat dan menakjubkan. Aku terlalu mencintai hidup dan karena itu aku tidak puas hanya dengan kecantikan alam.
Living is keeping the absurd alive.
Moreover, in this extremity of solitude none could count on any help from his neighbor; each had to bear the load of his troubles alone.
No – but what does that really mean? I’m fumbling in the dark, struggling to make something out. But I’ve long ceased finding that original.
After that, everything seemed to happen so fast, so deliberately, so naturally that I don’t remember any of it anymore.
The moment of despair is alone, pure, sure of itself, pitiless in its consequences. It has a merciless power.
Every day, soon after lunch, at a time when most people stayed indoors, enjoying a siesta, a dapper little old man stepped out on the balcony on the other side of the street. He had a soldierly bearing, very erect, and affected a military style of dressing; his snow-white hair was always brushed to perfect smoothness. Leaning over the balcony he would call:.
Written fifteen years ago, in 1940, amid the French and European disaster, this book declares that even within the limits of nihilism it is possible to find the means to proceed beyond nihilism. In all the books I have written since, I have attempted to pursue this direction. Although “The Myth of Sisyphus” poses mortal problems, it sums itself up for me as a lucid invitation to live and to create, in the very midst of the desert.
I would listen to my heartbeat. I couldn’t imagine that this sound which had been with me for so long could ever stop. I’ve never really had much of an imagination. But still I would try to picture the exact moment when the beating of my heart would no longer be going on inside my head.
I’m not happy to go, but one needn’t be happy to make another start.
I wasn’t good enough to forgive offenses, but eventually I always forgot them.
O my soul, do not aspire to immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the possible. – Pindar, Pythian iii.
There exists an obvious fact that seems utterly moral: namely, that a man is always a prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them. One has to pay something.
Anyway, it hardly mattered; I already felt worlds away.
For their heroism was that they had to conquer themselves first.