Absurdity Quotes

• Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The many instances of forged miracles, and prophecies, and supernatural events, which, in all ages, have either been detected by contrary evidence, or which detect themselves by their absurdity, prove sufficiently the strong propensity of mankind to the extraordinary and marvellous, and ought reasonably to begat a suspicion against all relations of this kind.

  David Hume

  Religious, Strong, Miracle

  David Hume (1861). “An Essay on Miracles. No. 10 of the “Philosophical Essays concerning Human Understanding.””, p.10

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• Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Champion

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• Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.

  Douglas Adams

  Life, Tired, Thinking

  Douglas Adams (2012). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five”, p.125, Pan Macmillan

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• In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Sad, World, Dominion

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2007). “The Art of Controversy”, p.69, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Men, Absurd, Fall Of Man

  "All Things Considered". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1908.

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• That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in another.

  Adlai E. Stevenson

  Wisdom, Political, Generations

  Adlai E. Stevenson (1954). “Call to Greatness”

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• There is a lot of absurdity sometimes, not just in Mormonism but often in other religions that want to pretend that no bad happens in their church, rather than taking care of what bad does happen.

  Neil LaBute

  Church, Doe, Mormonism

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• The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning - in other words, of absurdity - the more energetically meaning is sought.

  Vaclav Havel

  Hero, Meaning Of Life, Absence

  "Disturbing the Peace: A Conversation with Karel Hvížďala". Book by Václav Havel, translated by Paul Wilson. Chapter 5: "The Politics of Hope", 1990.

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• In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Men, Loathing, Existentialism

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2016). “The Birth of Tragedy”, p.65, Friedrich Nietzsche

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• People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization.

  Agnes Repplier

  Civilization, People, Way

  Agnes Repplier (1936). “In Pursuit of Laughter ...”, Boston : Houghton Mifflin

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• The privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject, but man only.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Life, Philosophical, Men

  Thomas Hobbes (2008). “Leviathan: Or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil”, p.32, Simon and Schuster

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• No amount of manifest absurdity... could deter those who wanted to believe from believing.

  Bernard Levin

  Believe, Manifest, Wanted

  Bernard Levin (1970). “Run it Down the Flagpole: Britain in the Sixties”

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• An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.

  Joseph Addison

  Conceited, Men, Talking

  Joseph Addison (1729). “The spectator”, p.35

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• It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down... Why do we laugh? Because it is a grave religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Funny, Religious, Fall

  "All Things Considered". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1908.

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• At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Feelings, Faces

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.10, Vintage

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• My turn of mind is so given to taking things in the absurd point of view, that it breaks out in spite of me every now and then.

  Lord Byron

  Views, Mind, Break Out

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• Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Belief, Opinion, Inconsistent

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.7, 谷月社

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• Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end. It arouses a revolt that can become fruitful

  Albert Camus

  Steps, Accepting, Dead Ends

  Albert Camus (2012). “Lyrical and Critical Essays”, p.346, Vintage

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• There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Fear, Educational, Air

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2015). “The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer - Studies in Pessimism (illustrated)”, p.47, Full Moon Publications

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• Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.

  Samuel Johnson

  Being Yourself, Lexicographer, Criminal Mind

  The Rambler, No. 135, July 02, 1751.

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• The concept of absurdity is something I'm attracted to.

  David Lynch

  Concepts

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• Unaware of the absurdity of it, we introduce our own petty household rules into the economy of the universe for which the life of generations, peoples, of entire planets, has no importance in relation to the general development.

  Alexander Herzen

  Generations, Development, Introducing

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• Our system is the height of absurdity, since we treat the culprit both as a child, so as to have the right to punish him, and as an adult, in order to deny him consolation.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Children, Order, Punishment

  "Tristes Tropiques". Book by Claude Lévi-Strauss, translated by John and Doreen Weightman. Chapter 38: "A Little Glass of Rum," pp. 388-389, 1955.

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• Constantly risking absurdity and death whenever he performs above the heads of his audience, the poet, like an acrobat, climbs on rhyme to a high wire of his own making.

  Lawrence Ferlinghetti

  Wire, Rhyming, Poet

  "At 96, Poet And Beat Publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti Isn't Done Yet". "Morning Edition" with Ari Shapiro, www.npr.org. June 11, 2015.

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