More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
O my soul, do not aspire to immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the possible.
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.
(what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying).
In a sense, and as in melodrama, killing yourself amounts to confessing. It is confessing that life is too much for you or that you do not understand it.
Living, naturally, is never easy. You continue making the gestures commanded by existence for many reasons, the first of which is habit. Dying voluntarily implies that you have recognized, even instinc— tively, the ridiculous character of that habit, the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that daily agitation, and the uselessness of suffering.
This divorce between man and this life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. All healthy men having thought of their own suicide, it can be seen, without further explanation, that there is a direct connection between this feeling and the longing for death.
We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking.
Like great works, deep feelings always mean more than they are conscious of saying.
Tomorrow, he was longing for tomorrow, whereas everything in him ought to reject it. That revolt of the flesh is the absurd.
The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world. This
Conquerors sometimes talk of vanquishing and overcoming. But it is always ‘overcoming oneself’ that they mean. You are well aware of what that means. Every man has felt himself to be the equal of a god at certain moments.
