Margo Fox’s Reviews > The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays > Status Update

The greater number of different lives he has lived, the more aloof he can be from them

What matters , said Nietzsche, is not eternal life, but eternal vivacity

there is no frontier between what a man wants to be and what he is ... he demonstrates to what a degree appearing creates being

All systems of morality are based on the idea that an action has consequences that legitimize or cancel it. A mind imbued with the absurd merely judges that those consequences must be considered calmly. It is ready to pay up. In other words, there may be responsible persons, but there are no guilty ones, in its opinion.

The absurd does not liberate, it binds. It does not authorize all actions. Everything is permitted does not mean that nothing is forbidden. The absurd merely confers an equivalence on the consequences of those actions...

...I have seen people behave badly with great morality, and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules.

But it is bad to stop. Hard to be satisfied with a single way of seeing - to go without contradiction, perhaps the most subtle of all spiritual forces. The preceding merely defines a way of thinking, but the point is to live.

However, it is good for man to judge himself occasionally. He is alone in being able to do so.

Thus, I draw from the absurd three consequences: which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion. By the mere activity of consciousness, I transform into a rule of life what was an invitation to death, and I refuse suicide.