Best 153 quotes in «absurdity quotes» category

Old Zen was the reduction of concepts to absurdity.

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

The climax of absurdity to which art may be carried when led away from nature by fashion, may be best seen in the works of Boucher.

The fixity of a habit is generally in direct proportion to its absurdity.

The marriage vow is an absurdity imposed by society.

...the most serious thing, and the strangest, is that we are afraid to the point of panic, not so much of seeing ourselves as of being seen by ourselves. This is our root absurdity. What is behind this great fear?

The absurd is sin without God.

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

The greater absurdities are, the more strongly they evince the falsity of that supposition from whence they flow.

The reductio ad absurdum is God's favorite argument.

There are those who will find [Albert Camus] notions about absurdity appealing, and others who will be drawn by the solar side of his work, about Algeria, the heat and so on.

There are two things I like stiff and one of them's jelly.

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.

Time is an absurdity. An abstraction. The only thing that matters is this moment.

To all the rest of his Absurdities, (for vice is always unreasonable,) he adds one more, who expects that Vertue from another which he won't practise himself.

Those pointless equations, to which no solution exists, are called absurdities.

To pardon those absurdities in ourselves which we cannot suffer in others is neither better nor worse than to be more willing to be fools ourselves than to have others so.

We've become to living with absurdity, and that to make people to see how much so, I had to ratchet up the insanity.

What an absurdity to go and bury oneself in South America, where they are always having revolutions.

What is a sense of humor? Surely not the ability to understand a joke. It comes rather from a residing feeling of one's own absurdity. It is the ability to understand a joke, and that the joke is on oneself.

The system of idolatry, invented by modern christianity, far surpasses in absurdity anything that we have ever heard of

To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.

Untruth being unacceptable to the mind of man, there is no other defence left for absurdity but obscurity.

Without the constantly living and articulated eperience of absurdity, there would be no reason to attempt to do something meaningful. And on the contrary, how can one experience one's own absurdity if one is not constantly seeking meaning?

Your job is to preserve yourself, not to descend into their hole. It's a relief when you arrive at this place, the point of absurdity, because then you are free, you owe them nothing.

All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street-corner or in a restaurant’s revolving door. So it is with absurdity. The absurd world more than others derives its nobility from that abject birth. In certain situations, replying “nothing” when asked what one is thinking about may be pretense in a man. Those who are loved are well aware of this. But if that reply is sincere, if it symbolizes that odd state of soul in which the void becomes eloquent, in which the chain of daily gestures is broken, in which the heart vainly seeks the link that will connect it again, then it is as it were the first sign of absurdity.

All of which does not alter the fact that Pnin was on the wrong train.

Although he was a young and virile man at 37, he was not inexhaustible. In addition to food and drink, he had better lay in a couple thousand tablets of viagra. The drug would probably remain potent if he vacuum packed the pills in groups of 10 and kept them in a freezer. That would work unless civilization completely collapsed and power companies were unable to function. Fortunately, Jim had a propane-powered backup generator with half a dozen tanks of fuel already on hand. If Henry added to the propane supply, and he used the generator only for essential maintenance like keeping the viagra freezer operating in warm weather, he would be happy here on the farm for a looong, looong time. Unless, even now, dead Jim was out there in the generator shed sabotaging the machinery.

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

And dying is more natural than living, because what could be more unnatural than that panicstricken thing leaping and falling like a last flame beneath the ribs?

A pleasant morning. Saw my classmates Gardner, and Wheeler. Wheeler dined, spent the afternoon, and drank Tea with me. Supped at Major Gardiners, and engag'd to keep School at Bristol, provided Worcester People, at their ensuing March meeting, should change this into a moving School, not otherwise. Major Greene this Evening fell into some conversation with me about the Divinity and Satisfaction of Jesus Christ. All the Argument he advanced was, 'that a mere creature, or finite Being, could not make Satisfaction to infinite justice, for any Crimes,' and that 'these things are very mysterious.' (Thus mystery is made a convenient Cover for absurdity.) [Diary entry, February 13 1756]

Both precious and absurd, this tightrope of existence we walk in both directions; strung only on a rhythm of heartbeats across a void

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises in individual, when displayed ego and self portrayed images are not recognised by anyone.

A partir du moment où elle est reconnue, l'absurdité est une passion, la plus déchirante de toutes.

A step lower and strangeness creeps in: perceiving that the world is "dense", sensing to what a degree a stone is foreign and irreducible to us, with what intensity nature or a landscape can negate us. At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise. The primitive hostility of the world rises up to face us across millenia.

As to your Newton, I confess I do not understand his void and his gravity; I admit he has demonstrated the movement of the heavenly bodies with more exactitude than his forerunners; but you will admit it is an absurdity to maintain the existence of Nothing. [Letter to Voltaire, 25 Nov. 1777]

At these words, the fathers of the fifty boys cried out aloud; the mothers repeated their exclamations an octave higher; whilst the rest, without knowing the cause, soon drowned the voices of both, with still louder lamentations of their own.

Be serious,” said Enjolras. “I am wild,” replied Grantaire.

But if one doesn't really exist, one wonders why..." she hesitated. "Why one makes such a fuss about things," Anthony suggested. "All that howling and hurrahing and gnashing of teeth. About the adventures of a self that isn't really a self—just the result of a lot of accidents. And of course," he went on, "once you start wondering, you see at once that there is no reason for making such a fuss. And then you don't make a fuss—that is, if you're sensible. Like me," he added, smiling.

Christianity would be helpless without the idea of free will and the idea of free will would be helpless without incongruity.

Din clipa în care a fost cunosută,absurditatea devine o pasiune,cea mai sfîșietoare din toate.

Et tout rentra dans l'ordre, pourtant déjà bien plein.

Ce que je ne comprends pas est sans raison. Le monde est peuplé de ces irrationnels. A lui seul dont je ne comprends pas la signification unique, il n'est qu'un immense irrationnel.

Custom is sanctified absurdity.

Epicuro,” Spain interrupted with a firmness that made us all turn, “you don’t want humanity to fail your Great Test because the lot of us, who should be out there shepherding, were stuck here, riveted, listening to you arguing theodicy with Voltaire.

Even if I could write the book I want to write nobody would take it - I know my compatriots only too well. Even if I could begin again it would be no use, because fundamentally I have no desire to work and no desire to become a usefull member of society. I sit there staring at the house across the way. It seems not only ugly and senseless, like all the other houses on the street, but from staring at it so intently, it has suddenly become absurd. The idea of constructing a place of shelter in that particular way strikes as absolutely insane. The city itself strikes me as a piece of the highest insanity, everything about it, sewers, elevated lines, slot machines, newspapers, telephones, cops, doorknobs, flophouses, screens, toilet paper, everything. Everything could just as well not be and not only nothing lost but a whole universe gained. I look at the people brushing by me to see if by chance one of them might agree with me. Supposing I intercepted one of them and just asked him a simple question. Supposing I just said to him suddenly: "Why do you go on living the way you do?" He would probably call a cop. I ask myself - does anyone ever talk to himself the way I do? I ask myself if there isn't something wrong with me. The only conclusion I can come to is that I am different.

Feeling confronted with the absurdity of life may sometimes nurture a personal satisfaction for those who like to set a paramount task or to create a compassionate mission. In so doing, the seal of absurdity becomes less unbearable, while it confers them a ‘Sisyphus’ status that transmutes them into heroes of human resilience. (“Sisyphus on the hill.)

Faith involves an acceptance of absurdity.

God knew man would evolve. People think some of the Old Testament laws are absurd now because we live in a very different culture, a different time period. They had their problems and we have ours. God is constant but man is not, and he foreknew the ever-changing world his people would have to deal with; therefore, and if there is indeed an omniscient God, a Christ-like figure would be our only rational, possible connection to a constant, holy God throughout the evolution of culture and social law. The only answer that makes sense when it comes to relevance regarding religions and time periods is Christ, and the chances are slim that men could have invented it.

HAMM: Scoundrel! Why did you engender me? NAGG: I didn't know. HAMM: What? What didn't you know? NAGG: That it'd be you. (Pause.)