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"The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world...."

"This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this ir..."

"This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this ir..."

"I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself, so like a brother, really, I fe..."

"The final conclusion of the absurdist protest is, in fact, the rejection of suicide and persistence in that hopeless enc..."

"The misery and greatness of this world: it offers no truths, but only objects for love. Absurdity is king, but love save..."

"The absurd has meaning only in so far as it is not agreed to...."

"The absurd does not liberate; it binds. It does not authorize all actions. 'Everything is permitted' does not mean that ..."

"A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly ..."

"Men die and they are not happy...."

"For a long time we both thought that this world had no ultimate meaning and that consequently we were cheated. I still t..."

"This very heart which is mine will forever remain indefinable to me. Between the certainty I have of my existence and th..."

"This world, as it is constituted, is not bearable. Therefore I have need of the moon, or of happiness, or immortality, o..."

"I want everything to be explained to me or nothing. And the reason is impotent when it hears this cry from the heart. Th..."

"For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life ..."

"Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter...."

"Living is keeping the absurd alive. Keeping it alive is, above all, contemplating it...."

"What's natural is the microbe. All the rest—health, integrity, purity (if you like)—is a product of the human will, of a..."

"There is no love of life without despair of life...."

"Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable...."

"The first progressive step for a mind overwhelmed by the strangeness of things is to realize that this feeling of strang..."

"This world has no importance; once a man realizes that, he wins his freedom...."

"Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful...."

"All that was left was this anguished heart, eager to live, rebelling against the deadly order of the world that had been..."

"Thus I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion...."

"Being aware of one's life, one's revolt, one's freedom, and to the maximum, is living, and to the maximum...."

"The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart...."

"One must imagine Sisyphus happy...."

"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simpl..."

"In the spring, Tipasa is inhabited by gods and the gods speak in the sun and the scent of absinthe leaves, in the silver..."

"If there is a soul, it is a mistake to believe that it is given to us fully created. It is created here, throughout a wh..."

"The present and the succession of presents before a constantly conscious soul is the ideal of the absurd man...."

"Living this way, in his own presence, time took on its most extreme dimensions, and each hour seemed to contain a world...."

"And awake now, I recognized one by one the imperceptible sounds of which the silence was made up: the figured bass of th..."

"Everything here leaves me intact, I surrender nothing of myself, and don no mask: learning patiently and arduously how t..."

"What counts is not the best living but the most living...."

"How contrive not to waste one's time? Answer: By being fully aware of it all the while...."

"I realized then that a man who had lived only one day could easily live for a hundred years in prison. He would have eno..."

"Every minute of life carries with it its miraculous value, and its face of eternal youth...."

"I was absent at the moment when I took up the most space...."

"Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present...."

"Great ideas, it has been said, come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps then, if we listen attentively, we shall ..."

"What I want now is not happiness but awareness...."

"For me it is enough to live with my whole body and bear witness with my whole heart...."

"I understand then why the doctrines that explain everything to me also debilitate me at the same time. They relieve me o..."

"As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars,..."

"The plague had gradually killed off in all of us the faculty not of love only but even of friendship. Naturally enough, ..."

"I want to keep my lucidity to the last, and gaze upon my death with all the fullness of my jealousy and horror...."

"I woke up with the stars in my face. Sounds of the countryside were drifting in. Smells of night, earth, and salt air we..."

"There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night...."

"Thought is always out in front. It sees too far, farther than the body, which lives in the present...."

"The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits...."

"Have you noticed that death alone awakens our feelings? How we love the friends who have just left us? How we admire tho..."

"To two men living the same number of years, the world always provides the same sum of experiences. It is up to us to be ..."

"There is no superhuman happiness, no eternity outside the curve of the days... only stones, flesh, stars, and those trut..."

"If an anguish still clutches me, it's when I feel this impalpable moment slip through my fingers like quicksilver...."

"But in poverty, illness, or loneliness we become aware of our eternity...."

"The seas, rains, necessity, desire, the struggle against death — these are things that unite us all...."

"In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer...."

"Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is...."

"I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules...."

"At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how ..."

"I don't want to be a genius. I have enough problems just trying to be a man...."

"You cannot create experience. You must undergo it...."

"To know oneself, one should assert oneself...."

"The need to be right: the sign of a vulgar mind...."

"We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love — first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage...."