Absurd Quotes - Page 29

• The absurd man will not commit suicide; he wants to live, without relinquishing any of his certainty, without a future, without hope, without illusions … and without resignation either. He stares at death with passionate attention and this fascination liberates him. He experiences the “divine irresponsibility” of the condemned man.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Suicide, Men, Fascination

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• People aim for the stars, and they end up like goldfish in a bowl. I wonder if it wouldn't be simpler just to teach children right from the start that life is absurd.

  Muriel Barbery

  Life, Stars, Children

  Muriel Barbery (2013). “The Elegance of the Hedgehog”, p.15, Gallic Books

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• To Yossarian, the idea of pennants as prizes was absurd. No money went with them, no class privileges. Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else.

  Joseph Heller

  Ideas, Class, Tennis

  Joseph Heller (1999). “Catch-22: A Novel”, p.75, Simon and Schuster

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• I mean, if you're asking a fellow to come out of a room so that you can dismember him with a carving knife, it's absurd to tack a 'sir' on to every sentence. The two things don't go together.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Mean, Knives, Two

  P.G. Wodehouse (2012). “The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 1: (Jeeves & Wooster)”, p.111, Random House

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• I certainly should have,' he agrees, smiling and thinking what an absurd and universally-accepted bit of nonsense it is, that your best friends must necessarily be the ones who best understand you. As if there weren't far too much understanding in the world already; above all, that understanding between lovers, celebrated in song and story, which is actually such torture that no two of them can bear it without frequent separations or fights.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Song, Fighting, Thinking

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• He could remember all about it now; the pitiful figure he must have cut; the absurd way in which he had gone and done the very thing he had so often agreed with himself in thinking would be the most foolish thing in the world; and had met with exactly the consequences which, in these wise moods, he had always foretold were certain to follow, if he ever did make such a fool of himself.

  Elizabeth Gaskell

  Wise, Memorable, Unrequited Love

  Elizabeth Gaskell (2010). “The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)”, p.1524, BookCaps Study Guides

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• Have a care how you speak to me, Imp. Doubtless he meant to sound threatening, but that absurd wisp of a mustache ruined the effect.

  George R. R. Martin

  Mustache, Sound, Care

  George R. R. Martin (2012). “George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones 5-Book Boxed Set (Song of Ice and Fire Series): A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and and A Dance with Dragons”, p.1038, Bantam

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• Resentment slowly poisoned my blood and I laughed at myself and my absurd hopes.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Blood, Resentment, Laughed

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• What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn't know the market place of any single thing.

  Oscar Wilde

  Men, Cynic, Dear

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• Nothing could be more absurd than moral lessons at such a moment! Oh, self-satisfied people: with what proud self-satisfaction such babblers are ready to utter their pronouncements! If they only knew to what degree I myself understand all the loathsomeness of my present condition, they wouldn't have the heart to teach me.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Heart, Self, People

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• We are not perfect. What god is Examine yours. According to your mythos he was so disappointed with his initial efforts creating your race that he tried again. At least we imprisoned our mistakes. Your god permits his to roam free. At a mere few thousand years old your creation myths are far more absurd than ours.

  Karen Marie Moning

  Mistake, Race, Years

  Karen Marie Moning (2011). “Shadowfever: Fever Series”, p.40, Delacorte Press

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• It was all absurd, without reason or meaning. People who didn't know each other were going to kill each other over a hill none of them cared about

  Karl Marlantes

  People, Hills, Reason

  Karl Marlantes (2010). “Matterhorn”, p.185, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• One is always willfully absurd.... If one does not say silly things with a purpose, then he is merely an idiot.

  Galen Beckett

  Silly, Doe, Purpose

  Galen Beckett (2010). “The House on Durrow Street”, p.206, Spectra

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• What is too absurd to be believed is believed because it is too absurd to be a lie.

  Robert Jordan

  Lying

  Robert Jordan (2010). “Lord of Chaos: Book Six of 'The Wheel of Time'”, p.250, Macmillan

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• In chess, as a purely intellectual game, where randomness is excluded, - for someone to play against himself is absurd ... It is as paradoxical, as attempting to jump over his own shadow.

  Stefan Zweig

  Games, Play, Intellectual

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• What an absurd amount of energy I have been wasting all my life trying to find out how things 'really are', when all the time they weren't.

  Hugh Prather

  Trying, Energy, Has Beens

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• I developed a deep, abiding fear of jeans, which I still have. I hold my breath and shut my eyes when I pull on a pair in the dressing room, afraid they will now, as then, get stuck at my hips and there I will stand, absurd, staring at the excess of hips that should, if I were a good person, be „slim“.

  Marya Hornbacher

  Eye, Jeans, Excess

  Marya Hornbacher (2014). “Wasted Updated Edition: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia”, p.25, Harper Collins

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• Today I suddenly experienced an absurd but quite valid sensation. I realized, in an intimate lightning flash, that I am no one. No one, absolutely no one.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Lightning, Today, Intimate

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• His words were still clear in her mind from that first meeting. "Whoever eats this will love you." She looked into the mirror, at her birthmark, bright as blood, at her kiss-stung lips, at the absurd smile stretching across her face. Carefully separating out the crushed pieces of shell, she pulled the dried pulp free from its cage of veins. Piece by piece, she put the sweet brown fruit in her own mouth and swallowed it down.

  Holly Black

  Sweet, Love You, Kissing

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• I never understood people who said their greatest fear was public speaking, or spiders, or any of the other minor terrors. How could you fear anything more than death? Everything else offered moments of escape: a paralyzed man could still read Dickens; a man in the grips of dementia might have flashes of the must absurd beauty.

  David Benioff

  Men, Greatest Fear, People

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• Tell me", he wanted to say, "everything in the whole world" - for he had the wildest, most absurd, extravagant ideas about poets and poetry - but how to speak to a man who does not see you? who sees ogres, satyrs, perhaps the depth of the sea instead?

  Virginia Woolf

  Men, Sea, Ideas

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.1145, Delphi Classics

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• The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd - The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Hope, Hurt, Regret

  Fernando Pessoa, Richard Zenith (1996). “Book of Disquietude”, Carcanet Press Limited

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• You can't possibly ask me to go without having some dinner. It's absurd. I never go without my dinner. No one ever does, except vegetarians and people like that.

  Oscar Wilde

  People, Doe, Dinner

  Oscar Wilde (1997). “Collected Works of Oscar Wilde: The Plays, the Poems, the Stories and the Essays Including De Profundis”, p.703, Wordsworth Editions

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• You have always told me it was Ernest. I have introduced you to every one as Ernest. You answer to the name of Ernest. You look as if your name was Ernest. You are the most earnest-looking person I ever saw in my life. It is perfectly absurd your saying that your name isn't Ernest.

  Oscar Wilde

  Names, Looks, Answers

  Oscar Wilde (1957). “The Importance of Being Earnest: A Trivial Comedy for Serious People. The Original Four-act Version”, p.8, Prabhat Prakashan

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• [Quantum mechanics] describes nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And yet it fully agrees with experiment. So I hope you can accept nature as She is - absurd.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Views, Common Sense, Religion

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