But everyone knows that life isn’t really worth living.
The absurd man catches sight of a burning and frigid, transparent and limited universe in which nothing is possible but everything is given, and beyond which all is collapse and nothingness. He can then decide to accept such a universe and draw from it his strength, his refusal to hope, and the unyielding evidence of a life without consolation.
I fixed myself some eggs and ate them out of the ban, without bread because I didn’t have any left and I didn’t feel like going downstairs to buy some.
And just then it crossed my mind that one might fire, or not fire – and it would come to absolutely the same thing.
I cut out an advertisement for Kruschen Salts and stuck it in an old notebook where I put things from the papers that interest me.
Don’t wait for the Last Judgment. It happens every day.
When she laughed, I wanted her again. A moment later, she asked me if I loved her. I told her that didn’t mean anything, but I didn’t think so. She looked sad then. But while we were making lunch, she laughed again, for no apparent reason, and the way she laughed made me kiss her.
One never changed his way of life; one life was as good as another.
In this flowering of air this fertility of the heavens it seemed as if a mans one duty was to live and be happy.
By ignoring compliments and homages we lead the person paying those compliments to think we look down on him, when in fact we are only doubting ourselves.
Asked to state his opinion of me, he said that I was “all right” and, when told to explain what he meant by that, he replied that everyone knew what that meant.
I was sure of myself, sure about everything, far surer than he; sure of my present life and of the death that was coming. That, no doubt, was all I had; but at least that certainty was something I could get my teeth into – just as it has got its teeth into me.
The world is always satisfied, it turns out, with countenance it can understand. Indolence and cowardice do the rest. Independence is earned by a few words of cheap confidence.
As they left, the girls were choking with laughter, but once they reached Mersault’s house and the cool shade of the rooms, which emphasized the dazzling whiteness of the sun-drenched garden walls, they discovered a silent harmony that Catherine expressed by the desire to take a sunbath on the terrace.
To-day the truth is a command.
This was the second time the doctor had glimpsed something of Mersault’s life; they had never confided in each other, Mersault conscious that Bernard was not a happy man, and Bernard rather baffled by Mersault’s way of life. They parted without a word.
Almost everybody considers himself capable of thinking and, to a certain degree, whether right or wrong, really does think. Very few, on the contrary, can fancy themselves poets or artists in words. But from the moment when thought won out over style, the mob invaded the novel.
Besides, I have to admit that whatever interest you can get people to take in you doesn’t last very long.
I was listening, and I could hear that I was being judged intelligent. But I couldn’t quite understand how an ordinary man’s qualities could become crushing accusations against a guilty man.
Orang seumur kita tidak pantas mencintai. Kita hanya saling menggembirakan. Nanti, setelah kita tua dan lemah, baru kita bisa saling mencintai. Di umur kita saat ini, kita hanya berpikir kalau kita mencintai. Seperti itulah.