Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 10:07AM
Drew Wolfe

Albert Camus

The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

There are people who prefer to look their fate in the eye.

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.

In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.

A living man can be enslaved and reduced to the historic condition of an object. But if he dies in refusing to be enslaved, he reaffirms the existence of another kind of human nature which refuses to be classified as an object.

Gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.

Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure.

When a war breaks out, people say: "It's too stupid; it can't last long." But though the war may well be "too stupid," that doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.

All systems of morality are based on the idea that an action has consequences that legitimize or cancel it. A mind imbued with the absurd merely judges that those consequences must be considered calmly.

 

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