Absurd Quotes - Page 40

• A translation in verse . . . seems to me something absurd, impossible.

  Victor Hugo

  Impossible, Translations, Verses

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• Real Men no longer drive Corvettes. Despite being able to squander gas with the best of them, even today's least enlightened Real Man finds the notion of a $17,000 plastic car with no trunk somewhat absurd.

  Bruce Feirstein

  Real, Men, Car

  Bruce Feirstein, Lionel Trippett (1982). “Real Men Don't Eat Quiche”, New English Library

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• Treating your audience like thieves is absurd. Anyone who chooses to listen to our music becomes a collaborator.

  Jeff Tweedy

  Thieves, Music Is, Audience

  "'Music Is Not A Loaf Of Bread'". Wired Interview, www.wired.com. November 15, 2004.

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• [Dr. Constain James] refuted so well the aberrations of Darwinism.... [A system] which is repugnant at once to history, to the tradition of all people, to exact science, to observed facts, and even to reason itself, would seem to need no refutation. But the corruption of this age, the machinations of the perverse, the danger of the simple, demand that such fancies, altogether absurd though they are, should - since they borrow the mask of science - be refuted by true science.

  Pope Pius IX

  Simple, People, Scary

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• The Son of God died; it is by all means to be believed because it is absurd. And he was buried and rose again; the fact is certain, because it is impossible.

  Tertullian

  Mean, Son, Rose

  Tertullian (2012). “The Sacred Writings of Tertullian (Annotated Edition)”, p.876, Jazzybee Verlag

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• I'm not making any absurd comparisons between myself and Bach, but I aspire to that, that my music will have the legs to survive whatever context it finds itself in.

  Steve Reich

  Legs, Aspire, Comparison

  Interview with Joshua Klein, pitchfork.com. November 22, 2006.

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• Absurd, irreducible; nothing--not even a profound and secret delirium of nature--could explain [a tree root].

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Nature, Roots, Profound

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• Whatever happens, every individual is a child of his time; so philosophy too is its own time apprehended in thoughts. It is just as absurd to fancy that a philosophy can transcend its contemporary world as it is to fancy that an individual can overleap his own age, jump over Rhodes.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Time, Children, Philosophy

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1958). “Philosophy of right”

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• Today's child is growing up absurd, because he lives in two worlds, and neither of them inclines him to grow up. Growing up--thatis our new work, and it is total. Mere instruction will not suffice.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Education, Children, Growing Up

  Marshall McLuhan, Quentin Fiore, Jerome Agel (1996). “The medium is the massage: an inventory of effects”, Hardwired

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• Faith prefers the absurd to the plausible.

  Mason Cooley

  Faith, Plausible

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• The absurd is sin without God.

  Albert Camus

  Sin, Absurdity, Without God

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.40, Vintage

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• I was thinking of the word Surrealistic . . . I don't think it should be used exclusively with my photographs. The meaning is close but I think my tendencies are more toward the whimsical or absurd. Surrealism is more connected with morbidity. From that I am very far away.

  Eva Fuka

  Thinking, Far Away, Whimsical

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• It is unheard-of, uncivilized barbarism that any woman should still be forced to bear such monstrous torture. It should be remedied. It should be stopped. It is simply absurd that, with our modern science, painless childbirth does not exist as a matter of course.... I tremble with indignation when I think ofthe unspeakable egotism and blindness of men of science who permit such atrocities when they can be remedied.

  Isadora Duncan

  Men, Thinking, Matter

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• To live and die amongst foreigners may seem less absurd than to live persecuted or tortured by one's fellow countrymen.... But toemigrate is always to dismantle the centre of the world, and so to move into a lost, disoriented one of fragments.

  John Berger

  Moving, World, May

  John Berger (2014). “And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief As Photos”, p.46, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• I have sometimes seen women, who would have been sensible enough, if they would have been content not to be called women of sense--but by aiming at what they had not, they only proved absurd--for sense cannot be counterfeited.

  Horace Walpole

  Women, Sometimes, Enough

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• Critics are reprimanded when they get sarcastic. How absurd! Is the torch of criticism supposed to shine without burning?

  Franz Grillparzer

  Sarcastic, Sarcasm, Shining

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• What could be more absurd than the idea that genuine anti-Christian prejudice is a major force in American politics.

  Michael Kinsley

  Christian, Religious, Ideas

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• ... For all our alarm, it is clear that the religious right is responding to a real hunger in our society... a deep-seated yearning for stable values... When conservative Christian groups talk of failures in our educational system, the erosion of our moral standards, and the waste of young lives, they are addressing real and legitimate concerns... Among secularists, the aversion toward discussion of moral values, let alone religion, can reach absurd extremes.

  Norman Lear

  Christian, Religious, Real

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• Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd.

  Sinclair Lewis

  Contentment, World, Misery

  Sinclair Lewis (2015). “Babbitt”, p.210, Penguin

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• If you find life absurd, shouldn’t you find death precisely meaningful?

  Harry Mulisch

  Meaningful, Ifs

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• Yes; poor Bunbury is a dreadful invalid. Well, I must say, Algernon, that I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shillyshallying with the question is absurd.

  Oscar Wilde

  Thinking, Mind, Poor

  Oscar Wilde (2005). “The Importance of Being Earnest”, p.22, Prestwick House Inc

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• That's absurd," I said with a little laugh. "Nobody can read too much. That's like saying someone breathes too much.

  Lynn Austin

  Laughing, Littles, Too Much

  Lynn Austin (2011). “Wonderland Creek”, p.10, Bethany House

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• And yet ... But what if ... I want to do something impossible. Something astounding and unheard of. I want to scrub the moss off the Space Shuttle and fly Julie to the moon and colonise it, or float a capsized cruise ship to some distant island where no one will protest us, or just harness the magic that brings me into the brains of the Living and use it to bring Julie into mine, because it's warm in here, it's quiet and lovely, and in here we aren't an absurd juxtaposition, we are perfect.

  Isaac Marion

  Moon, Islands, Space

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• Young people, however, tend to ignore the customs of their elders. Adolescent rebellion has been responsible for all manner of absurd costumes. The more ridiculous a certain fashion is, the more adolescents will cling to it.

  David Eddings

  Fashion, People, Costumes

  David Eddings, Leigh Eddings (1997). “Polgara the Sorceress”, Del Rey

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• When she looked at herself in her wedding photographs, Ammu felt the woman that looked back at her was someone else. A foolish jewelled bride. Her silk sunset-coloured sari shot with gold. Rings on every finger. White dots of sandalwood paste over her arched eye-brows. Looking at herself like this, Ammu's soft mouth would twist into a small, bitter smile at the memory - not of the wedding itself so much as the fact that she had permitted herself to be so painstakingly decorated before being led to the gallows. It seemed so absurd. So futile. Like polishing firewood.

  Arundhati Roy

  Memories, Sunset, Eye

  Arundhati Roy (2002). “The God of Small Things”, p.43, Penguin Books India

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