Get this into your head: if violence were only a thing of the future, if exploitation and oppression never existed on earth, perhaps displays of nonviolence might relieve the conflict. But if the enti...
First, it has been charged with inviting people to remain in a kind of desperate quietism because, since no solutions are possible, we should have to consider action in this world as quite impossible....
Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance. I leaned back and closed my eyes. But the images, forewarned, immediately leaped up and filled my close...
Don’t be afraid; I’ll keep looking at you for ever and ever, without a flutter of my eyelids, and you’ll live in my gaze like a mote in a sunbeam.
Don't you ever get taken that way? When I can't see myself I begin to wonder if I really and truly exist. I pat myself just to make sure, but it doesn't help much.
But a little while ago I made an experiment with the absolute or the absurd. This root—there was nothing in relation to which it was absurd. Oh, how can I put it in words? Absurd: in relation to the s...
But I must finally realize that I am subject to these sudden transformations. The thing is that I rarely think; a crowd of small metamorphoses accumulate in me without my noticing it, and then, one fi...
As for me, I am mean: that means that I need the suffering of others to exist. A flame. A flame in their hearts. When I am all alone, I am extinguished.
And every man ought to say to himself, Am I really the kind of man who has the right to act in such a way that humanity might guide itself by my actions? And if he does not say that to himself, he is...
All these creatures spend their time explaining, realizing happily that they agree with each other.
A pale reflection of myself wavers in my consciousness...and suddenly the I pales, pales, and fades out.
A madman's ravings are absurd in relation to the situation in which he finds himself, but not in relation to his madness.
A little more and I would have fallen into the mirror trap. I avoided it, but only to fall into the window trap: with nothing to do, my arms dangling, I go over to the window.
Man is a useless passion.
How nice it is to know you are so profoundly happy, it's had me beaming all day.
Emotion is first of all and in principle an accident
You see, I'm fond of teasing, it'sa second nature with me—and I'm used to teasing myself. Plaguing myself, if you prefer; I don't tease nicely.
You must be like me; you must suffer in rhythm.
Will you do me the honour of lunching with me on Wednesday? With pleasure. I had as much desire to eat with him as I had to hang myself.
Where shall I keep mine? You don’t put your past in your pocket; you have to have a house. I have only my body: a man entirely alone, with his lonely body, cannot indulge in memories; they pass throug...