Myth Of Sisyphus Quotes - Page 2

• What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch, what resists me - that I understand. And these two certainties - my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle - I also know that I cannot reconcile them. What other truth can I admit without lying, without bringing in a hope I lack and which means nothing within the limits of my conditions?

  Albert Camus

  Lying, Mean, Two

  "The Myth of Sisyphus". Book by Albert Camus, 1942.

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• There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

  Albert Camus

  Change, Fate, Destiny

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.121, Vintage

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• For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers.

  Albert Camus

  Self, Water, Trying

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.19, Vintage

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• ...Any authentic creation is a gift to the future.

  Albert Camus

  Art, Culture, Creation

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.212, Vintage

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• There is no longer a single idea explaining everything, but an infinite number of essences giving a meaning to an infinite number of objects. The world comes to a stop, but also lights up.

  Albert Camus

  Light, Essence, Ideas

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.45, Vintage

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• 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.

  Albert Camus

  Inspirational, Motivational, New Year

  Albert Camus (2013). “The Myth of Sisyphus”, p.16, Penguin UK

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• Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.

  Albert Camus

  Future, Perfect, Art And Culture

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.212, Vintage

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• Time will prolong time, and life will serve life. In this field that is both limited and bulging with possibilities, everything to himself, except his lucidity, seems unforeseeable to him. What rule, then, could emanate from that unreasonable order? The only truth that might seem instructive to him is not formal: it comes to life and unfolds in men. The absurd mind cannot so much expect ethical rules at the end of its reasoning as, rather, illustrations and the breath of human lives.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Illustration, Order

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.68, Vintage

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• At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Feelings, Faces

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.10, Vintage

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• If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be the history of its successive regrets and its impotences.

  Albert Camus

  Regret, Significant, Humans

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.18, Vintage

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• There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest — whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories — comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer.

  Albert Camus

  Suicide, Philosophy, Philosophical

  Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus) "Absurdity and Suicide" (1942)

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• There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules

  Albert Camus

  Integrity, People, Needs

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.66, Vintage

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• Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

  Albert Camus

  Suicide, Philosophy, Suicidal

  Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus) "Absurdity and Suicide" (1942)

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• If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy.

  Albert Camus

  Joy, Sorrow, Sometimes

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.121, Vintage

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• What, then, is that incalculable feeling that deprives the mind of the sleep necessary to life? A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions 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 divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.

  Albert Camus

  Memories, Sleep, Divorce

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.6, Vintage

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• Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined. Society has but little connection with such beginnings. The worm is in man's heart. That is where it must be sought. One must follow and understand this fatal game that leads from lucidity in the face of existence to flight from light.

  Albert Camus

  Heart, Men, Thinking

  Albert Camus (1955). “The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays”

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• This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.

  Albert Camus

  Divorce, Men, Absurdity Of Life

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.6, Vintage

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• Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him?

  Albert Camus

  Succeed, Steps, Torture

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.121, Vintage

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• Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. It would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd discovery. It happens as well that the felling of the absurd springs from happiness. "I conclude that all is well," says Oedipus, and that remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted. It drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a preference for futile suffering. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men.

  Albert Camus

  Happiness, Mistake, Spring

  "The Myth of Sisyphus". Book by Albert Camus, 1955.

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• Man cannot do without beauty, and this is what our era pretends to want to disregard.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Want, Eras

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.191, Vintage

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• Great feelings take with them their own universe, splendid or abject.

  Albert Camus

  Feelings, Splendid, Sisyphus

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.10, Vintage

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• To two men living the same number of years, the world always provides the same sum of experiences. It is up to us to be conscious of them.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Years, Two

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.62, Vintage

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• Thinking is learning all over again how to see, directing one's consciousness, making of every image a privileged place.

  Albert Camus

  Thinking, Consciousness, Sisyphus

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.43, Vintage

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• In "The Myth of Sisyphus", his most important non-fiction work, Albert Camus suggested that if we believed what most people claim to be the purpose of life, we would feel compelled to commit suicide. If, however, we accept that life has no purpose we would be inclined to soldier on in a cussed, stoical manner like Sisyphus, endlessly pushing his rock up a hill only to see it roll down again.

  Philip French

  Life, Death, Suicide

  "Feathered frenzy" by Philip French, www.theguardian.com. December 10, 2005.

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