I have always felt I lived on the high seas, threatened, at the heart of a royal happiness.
The greatness of man lies in his decision to be stronger than his condition.
The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning.
The absurd is sin without God.
Old women even forget how to love their sons. The heart gets worn out, Monsieur.
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.
My great idea is that we must forgive the Pope. First of all, he needs it more than anyone else. Besides, it is the only way of placing oneself above him.
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.
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.
But it takes a lot of money to live freely by the sea.
Happiness is not everything and men have their duties. Mine is to find my mother, a homeland.
Happiness is generous. It does not subsist on destruction.
There are always reasons for murdering a man. But there is no justification for his existence.
The absurd is a shadow cast over everything we do and even if we try to live life as if it has meaning as if there are reasons for doing things the absurd will linger in the back of our minds as a nagging doubt that perhaps there is no point.
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.
Since we’re all going to die, it’s obvious that when and how don’t matter.
One dies if necessary, one breaks rather than bending. But I bend, because I continue to love myself.
How do you put everyone in the pool, so you have the right to dry yourself in the sun?
Whatever prevents you from doing your work has become your work.
I explained to him, however, that my nature was such that my physical needs often got in the way of my feelings.