Absurd Quotes - Page 30

• It is curious that people tend to regard government as a quasi-divine, selfless, Santa Claus organization. Government was constructed neither for ability nor for the exercise of loving care; government was built for the use of force and for necessarily demagogic appeals for votes. If individuals do not know their own interests in many cases, they are free to turn to private experts for guidance. It is absurd to say that they will be served better by a coercive, demagogic apparatus.

  Murray Rothbard

  Exercise, Organization, Government

  Murray N. Rothbard (2004). “Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, Scholar's Edition”, p.1302, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• It was moving, but so absurd that I nearly laughed out loud. I imagined a new line of Hallmark cards: "Thank you for not killing my boyfriend, even if it risks killing you.

  Hilary Duff

  Moving, My Boyfriend, Risk

  Hilary Duff (2011). “Devoted”, p.264, Simon and Schuster

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• If we want to set out on the aruous search for the truth, we must all summon up the courage to leave the lines along which we have thought until now and as the first step begin to doubt everything that we previously accepted as correct and true. Can we still afford to close our eyes and stop up our ears because new ideas are supposed to be heretical and absurd?

  Erich von Däniken

  Eye, Ideas, Doubt

  Erich von Däniken (1969). “Chariots of the Gods?: Unsolved Mysteries of the Past”

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• The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation.

  Emma Goldman

  War, Apology, Law

  Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism: Top Crime Collections”, p.33, 谷月社

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• It then becomes necessary to stop short and make a choice: Either/Or. Either one drifts with their absurd system of ideas, believing that this is the human community. Or one dissents totally from their system of ideas and stands as a lonely human being. (But luckily one notices that the others are in the same crisis and making the same choices.)

  Paul Goodman

  Lonely, Believe, Ideas

  Paul Goodman (2011). “Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society”, p.124, New York Review of Books

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• The joy is an absurd yellow tulip, popping up in my life, contradicting all the evidence that shows it should not be there.

  Marya Hornbacher

  Yellow, Joy, Contradicting

  Marya Hornbacher (2009). “Madness: A Bipolar Life”, p.248, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Do not mistake me. I am not yet weak enough to yield to fearful imaginings, which are almost as absurd as illusions of hope, and are certainly harder to bear. If I must deceive myself, I should prefer to stay on the side of confidence, for I shall lose no more there and shall suffer less.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Mistake, Yield, Suffering

  Marguerite Yourcenar (1957). “Hadrian's Memoirs”

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• When we no longer pray, no longer listen to the voice of love that speaks to us in the moment, our lives become absurd lives in which we are thrown back and forth between the past and the future. If we could just be, for a few minutes each day, fully where we are, we would indeed discover that we are not alone and that the One who is with us wants only one thing: to give us love

  Henri Nouwen

  Past, Voice, Giving

  Henri J. M. Nouwen (2017). “You are the Beloved: Daily Meditations for Spiritual Living”, p.20, Hachette UK

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• Of all the universal lies she accepted unquestioningly, the happy ending was the most absurd. The hero and heroine lived happily ever after, and the ending seemed indisputable, definitive. No questions asked about how long love or happiness lasts in that 'forever' that can be divided into lifetimes, years, months. Even days

  Arturo Pérez-Reverte

  Lying, Hero, Years

  Arturo Pérez-Reverte (1996). “The Club Dumas”, Harcourt

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• I have been a hundred times on the point of killing myself, but still was fond of life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our worst instincts. What can be more absurd than choosing to carry a burden that one really wants to throw to the ground? To detest, and yet to strive to preserve our existence? To caress the serpent that devours us, and hug him close to our bosoms till he has gnawed into our hearts?

  Voltaire

  Heart, Hug, Weakness

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• ... the more I learned, the more conscious did I become of the fact that I was ridiculous. So that for me my years of hard work at the university seem in the end to have existed for the sole purpose of demonstrating and proving to me, the more deeply engrossed I became in my studies, that I was an utterly absurd person

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Hard Work, Years, Purpose

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• In the whole of your absurd past you discover so much that's absurd, so much deceit and credulity, that it might be a good idea to stop being young this minute, to wait for youth to break away from you and pass you by, to watch it going away, receding in the distance, to see all its vanity, run your hand through the empty space it has left behind, take a last look at it, and then start moving, make sure your youth has really gone, and then calmly, all by yourself, cross to the other side of Time to see what people and things really look like.

  Louis-Ferdinand Celine

  Running, Distance, Moving

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• Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders?

  Leo Tolstoy

  Broken Heart, Trying, Together

  Leo Tolstoy (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy (Illustrated)”, p.2184, Delphi Classics

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• What for me is bliss and life and ecstasy and exaltation, the world in general seeks at most in imagination; in life it finds it absurd.

  Hermann Hesse

  Imagination, Exaltation, World

  Hermann Hesse (2013). “Steppenwolf: A Novel”, p.31, Macmillan

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• The observations and encounters of a solitary, taciturn man are vaguer and at the same times more intense than those of a sociable man; his thoughts are deeper, odder and never without a touch of sadness. Images and perceptions that could be dismissed with a glance, a laugh, an exchange of opinions, occupy him unduly, become more intense in the silence, become significant, become an experience, an adventure, an emotion. Solitude produces originality, bold and astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportionate, the absurd and the forbidden.

  Thomas Mann

  Adventure, Sadness, Men

  Thomas Mann (2012). “Death in Venice & A Man and His Dog: A Dual-Language Book”, p.101, Courier Corporation

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• Then she made up her mind.It was absurd to pretend that he did not exist.It no longer hurt her to see him. She opened the door wide and let him into her life again.

  Steig Larsson

  Hurt, Doors, Mind

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• The word God has become empty of meaning through thousands of years of misuse... By misuse, I mean that people who have never glimpsed the realm of the sacred, the infinite vastness behind that word, use it with great conviction, as if they knew what they are talking about. Or they argue against it, as if they knew what it is they are denying. This misuse gives rise to absurd beliefs, assertions, and egoic delusions, such as "My or our God is the only true God, and your God is false," or Nietzsche's famous statmeent "God is dead.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Mean, Talking, Years

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• Love" and all the obsessive behaviors associated with it, was an absurd emotion.

  Judith McNaught

  Emotion, Behavior, Obsessive

  Judith McNaught (2016). “Whitney, My Love”, Simon and Schuster

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• Between the probable and proved there yawns A gap. Afraid to jump, we stand absurd, Then see behind us sink the ground and, worse, Our very standpoint crumbling. Desperate dawns Our only hope: to leap into the Word That opens up the shuttered universe.

  Sheldon Vanauken

  Faith, Inspiration, Dawn

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• For a split second, Harry thought how absurd it was for Tonks to expect the dummy to hear her talking that quietly through a sheet of glass, when there were buses rumbling along behind her and all the racket of street full of shoppers. Then he reminded himself that dummies could not hear anyway.

  J. K. Rowling

  Glasses, Talking, Splits

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• If I convince myself that this life has no other aspect than that of the absurd, if I feel that its whole equilibrium depends on that perpetual opposition between my conscious revolt and the darkness in which it struggles, if I admit that my freedom has no meaning except in relation to its limited fate, then I must say that what counts is not the best living but the most living.

  Albert Camus

  Struggle, Fate, Darkness

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.60, Vintage

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• I heard you're campaigning on my behalf." He walked over to me. "That wouldn't be because you'd miss me too much if I were gone,would it?" "Don't be absurd," I scoffed. "I don't condone murder, even for people like you." "People like me,huh?" He cocked an eyebrow. "You mean devilishly handsome, debonair young men who come to sweep rebellious princesses of their feet?" "You came to kidnap me, not sweep me off my feet," I said,but he waved his hand at the idea. "Semantics.

  Amanda Hocking

  Princess, Mean, Men

  Amanda Hocking (2014). “Trylle: The Complete Trilogy”, p.298, Pan Macmillan

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• Fear is the destructive energy in man. It withers the mind, it distorts thought, it leads to all kinds of extraordinarily clever and subtle theories, absurd superstitions, dogmas, and beliefs.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Clever, Fear, Men

  Jiddu Krishnamurti (1991). “The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti, 1961: There Is No Thinker, Only Thought”, Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company

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• There's no end to the absurd things people will do trying to make life mean something.

  William Wharton

  Mean, People, Trying

  William Wharton (1980). “Birdy”, Avon Books

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• A lonely, quiet person has observations and experiences that are at once both more indistinct and more penetrating than those of one more gregarious; his thoughts are weightier, stranger, and never without a tinge of sadness. . . . Loneliness fosters that which is original, daringly and bewilderingly beautiful, poetic. But loneliness also fosters that which is perverse, incongruous, absurd, forbidden.

  Thomas Mann

  Beautiful, Lonely, Loneliness

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