Absurdity Quotes

• Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Champion

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• 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 world stands on absurdities, and without them perhaps nothing at all would happen.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  World, Happens

  Fyodor Dostoevsky (2002). “The Brothers Karamazov: A Novel in Four Parts With Epilogue”, p.243, Macmillan

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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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• If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Hope, Spiritual

  Albert Einstein (2010). “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein”, p.480, Princeton University Press

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• Modern man must descend the spiral of his own absurdity to the lowest point; only then can he look beyond it. It is obviously impossible to get around it, jump over it, or simply avoid it.

  Vaclav Havel

  Hero, Men, Looks

  "Disturbing the Peace". Book by Vaclav Havel, 1986.

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

  David Lynch

  Concepts

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• Even though you can't expect to defeat the absurdity of the world, you must make that attempt.

  Phil Ochs

  World, Defeat

  "Complete Phil Ochs: Chords of Fame". Book edited by Tom Nolan and Mark Eliot, 1978.

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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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• The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Philosophical, Criminal Mind, Spirituality

  Friedrich Nietzsche, R. J. Hollingdale (1996). “Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits”, p.182, Cambridge University Press

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Only by living absurdly is it possible to break out of this infinite absurdity.

  Julio Cortazar

  Break Out, Infinite, Break

  Julio Cortazar (2016). “Hopscotch, Blow-Up, We Love Glenda So Much”, p.14, Everyman's Library

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• Reason is a supple nymph, and slippery as a fish by nature. She had as leave give her kiss to an absurdity any day, as to syllogistic truth. The absurdity may turn out truer.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Nature, Kissing, Nymphs

  D. H. Lawrence (1966). “Selected Poems of D.h. Lawrence”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• It is not in the world of ideas that life is lived. Life is lived for better or worse in life, and to a man in life, his life can be no more absurd than it can be the opposite of absurd, whatever that opposite may be.

  Archibald MacLeish

  Men, Opposites, Ideas

  Archibald MacLeish (1978). “Riders on the Earth: essays and recollections”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

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• Therefore, when I considered this carefully, the contempt which I had to fear because of the novelty and apparent absurdity of my view, nearly induced me to abandon utterly the work I had begun.

  Nicolaus Copernicus

  Fear, Views, Novelty

  William Caxton, Jean Calvin, Nicolaus Copernicus, John Knox, Edmund Spenser (1938). “Prefaces and prologues to famous books”

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• Despite all the lunacy of the last century, all the absurdity of war and genocide, we believe that humans being are rational and are made to seek the truth.

  Timothy Radcliffe

  War, Believe, Lasts

  Timothy Radcliffe (2005). “What is the Point of Being a Christian?”, p.114, A&C Black

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• All I try to do is as earnestly and as acutely as I can, conceive a character and try to portray this character just honestly. If the humor is within the absurdity and the awfulness of situations, then let it be seen that way.

  Patrick Warburton

  Character, Trying, Way

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

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• Everything in Italy that is particularly elegant and grand borders upon insanity and absurdity or at least is reminiscent of childhood.

  Alexander Herzen

  Childhood, Insanity, Borders

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• A prophet or an achiever must never mind an occasional absurdity, it is an occupational risk.

  Oswald Mosley

  Risk, Mind, Prophet

  Oswald Mosley (2012). “My Life - Oswald Mosley”, p.238, Black House Publishing Ltd

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• Once an absurdity is accepted as truth, it will seem truer the more absurd it is shown to be.

  Robert Breault

  Truth, Accepted, Absurd

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• This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.

  Albert Camus

  Divorce, Men, Absurdity Of Life

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.6, Vintage

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