Quotes Tagged "absurdism"

Mother used to say that however miserable one is, there’s always something to be thankful for. And each morning, when the sky brightened and light began to flood my cell, I agreed with her.

Men, too, secrete the inhuman. At certain moments of lucidity, the mechanical aspect of their gestures, their meaningless pantomime makes silly everything that surrounds them. A man is talking on the telephone behind a glass partition; you cannot hear him, but you see his incomprehensible dumb show: you wonder why he is alive. This discomfort in the face of man’s own inhumanity, this incalculable tumble before the image of what we are, this “nausea,” as a writer of today calls it, is also the absurd.

You’re better looking than me. You’re more intelligent than me. Your personality is more likable than mine. You make more money than me. Your family is nicer than mine. Your religion is better than mine. You’ve seen more beaches than me. You’ve been to more cities than me. Your automobile is nicer than mine. Your significant other is better looking than mine. Your candidate won. Your home team won. You’re number one. But life is a tie. We all die.

the God who holds everything together, that God is nothing more than time itself. Not a thinking, acting entity, a physical law. With which one can negotiate as little as one can with one's own fate. God is time, and time is not merciful. We are born, and our life is already trickling away like the sand in an hourglass. Death is forever inevitably before us. Our fate is nothing but a concatenation of cause and effect. In light and in shadow.

But practically I know men and recognize them by their behavior, by the totality of their deeds, by the consequences caused in life by their presence.