Quotes About Absurdity

Consider the fiddlesticks!

The comic effect of the satire is derived from the simultaneous presence, in the reader's mind, of the social reality with which he is familiar, and of its reflections in the distorting mirror of the satirist. It focuses attention on abuses and deformities in society of which, blunted by habit, we were no longer aware; it makes us suddenly discover the absurdity of the familiar and the familiarity of the absurd.

Life is the farce we are all forced to endure.

We can regard our life as a uselessly disturbing episode in the blissful repose of nothingness.

There is no absurdity so palpable that one could not fix it firmly in the head of every man on earth provided one began to imprint it before his sixth year by ceaselessly rehearsing it before him with solemn earnestness.

The true emblem of causa sui is Baron Münchhausen, who, clamping his legs around his horse as it sinks in the water, pulls his pigtail up over his head and raises himself and the horse into the heights; under this emblem, put: causa sui.

these people would indeed only be concerned for themselves, for their egoism, just like the bandit, from whom they are distinguished only by the absurdity of their means.

Pigs are horses. Girls are boys. War is peace.

the fact that she had permitted herself to be so painstakingly decorated before being led to the gallows. It seemed so absurd. So futile. Like polishing firewood.

look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it

Look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it. —Jules Renard, 1890

would like to chop you up into small, manageable pieces and grill you on a hibachi, then feed you to my shar-pei. But all that comes out is Welcome to moviefone!

Reason can be fought with reason. How are you going to fight the unreasonable? The trouble with you, my dear, and with most people, is that you don't have sufficient respect for the senseless. The senseless is the major factor in our lives. You have no chance if it is your enemy.

The purpose of philosophy is not to help men find a meaning in life, but to prove to them that there isn't any

He was seeing the final contradiction, the grotesque absurdity at the end of the irrationalists' game

Il comportamento logico ci abbandona molto prima che la vita stessa e non è cosa rara che l'uomo si comporti senza senso.

A blurred region, in the heart of vastness, far from earth and heaven, with no ground underfoot, no vault of sky overhead, nothing. I am the prisoner of an alien matter and my body is clothed in a dead, formless substance - or rather I have no body, I am that alien matter.

Once, a terribly important war never got declared, and all because the King, decked in spangles and crystal pendants, hung three days from the ceiling of the main hall and passed for a chandelier, holding his mouth to keep from laughing out loud at the ministers rushing about frantically below.

Cynicism, loss of spiritual values, two world wars, the communist disillusionment, psychoanalysis, have forced the 20th century writer to keep his hero uninvolved, detached, burdened with problems relating to life.... If the modern world could be summed up with a single word, it would be 'absurd.' The only truly creative response to this is the comic version of life.

This is the way I think the world will end—with general giggling by all the witty heads, who think it is a joke.' Kierkegaard.

What's the worst that can happen? A tidal wave? Glaciers with guns?

Fill in the blanks, you'd have a novel; keep it short and it's a play by Beckett.

Painters, poets and philosophers have seen many things in the myth of Sisyphus. They have seen an image of the absurdity of human life, the futility of effort, the remorseless cruelty of fate, the unconquerable power of gravity. But they have seen too something of mankind's courage, resilience, fortitude, endurance and self-belief. They see something heroic in our refusal to submit.

Fighting for peace, is like f***ing for chastity