All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning.
There is scarcely any passion without struggle.
Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.
If the world were clear, art would not exist.
The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying). I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions.
At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman.
One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.
The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.
There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night.
The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious.
I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I cannot know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it.
Outside of that single fatality of death, everything, joy or happiness, is liberty.
Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable.
At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.
In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.
Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.
What is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying.
Like great works, deep feelings always mean more than they are conscious of saying.
It happens that the stage sets collapse. Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm – this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the “why” arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.
In a universe suddenly divested of illusion and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land.
This very heart which is mine will forever remain indefinable to me. Between the certainty I have of my existence and the content I try to give to that assurance, the gap will never be filled. Forever I shall be a stranger to myself.
I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
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