Best Absurd Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 21

“The word ‘slavery’ and ‘right’ are contradictory, they cancel each other out. Whether as between one man and another, or between one man and a whole people, it would always be absurd to say: "I hereby make a covenant with you which is wholly at your expense and wholly to my advantage; I will respect it so long as I please and you shall respect it as long as I wish.”

People Men Long Whole Wish Please Advantage Slavery Absurd Expenses One Man Contradictory Covenant

Author:Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“It has always seemed absurd to suppose that a god would choose for his companions, during all eternity, the dear souls whose highest and only ambition is to obey.”

Soul Ambition Highest Eternity Dear Absurd Companion

Book:The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll

Source: The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll

“At the time we’re stuck in it, like hostages locked in a Turkish bath, high school seems the most serious business in the world to just about all of us. It’s not until the second or third class reunion that we start realizing how absurd the whole thing was.”

World Whole Seems School Realizing Class Serious High School Thirds Stuck Absurd Locked Baths Reunion Hostage Turkish Serious Business Class Reunion

Book:On writing: a memoir of the craft

Source: On writing: a memoir of the craft

“The absurd is lucid reason noting its limits.”

Reason Limits Absurd

Book:The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

Source: The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“Everyone has a photographic Memory, some just don't have film.”

Humor Funny Film Memories Justice Travel Absurd Wise Man Once Said Funny Life Old Jokes Photographic Memory

Author:Steven Wright

“Yes, I am here. And you are lucky to be here too after all the absurd things you've done since you left home.”

Done Home Left Lucky Absurd

Author:J. R. R. Tolkien

“I have little left in myself -- I must have you. The world may laugh -- may call me absurd, selfish -- but it does not signify. My very soul demands you: it will be satisfied, or it will take deadly vengeance on its frame.”

World May Littles Doe Soul Left Laughing Demand Selfish Satisfied Absurd Call Me Vengeance

Book:The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

Source: The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

“why shouldnt things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? they are so, and we are so, and they and we go together.”

Together Absurd Transitory

Book:The letters of George Santayana

Source: The letters of George Santayana

“we must not blame our poor symbols if they take forms that seem trivial to us, or absurd, ... however paltry they may be; the nature of our life alone has determined their forms.”

Ifs May Seems Form Poor Our Lives Blame Determined Absurd Symbols

Book:The Passion of New Eve

Source: The Passion of New Eve

“State ownership! It leads only to absurd and monstrous conclusions; state ownership means state monopoly, concentrated in the hands of one party and its adherents, and that state brings only ruin and bankruptcy to all.”

Mean States Hands Party Absurd Conclusion Ruins Ownership Monopoly Monstrous Bankruptcy

Author:Benito Mussolini

“It is absurd to expect the inclinations and wishes of two human beings to coincide, through any long period of time. To oblige them to act and live together is to subject them to some inevitable potion of thwarting, bickering, and unhappiness.”

Humans Long Two Together Wish Human Beings Subjects Periods Absurd Inevitable Unhappiness Inclination Long Periods Of Time Bickering

Author:William Godwin

“In the end, the art of hunger can be described as an existential art. It is a way of looking death in the face, and by death I mean death as we live it today: without God, without hope of salvation. Death as the abrupt and absurd end of life”

Way Mean Art Ends Today Faces Salvation Hunger Absurd Existential End Of Life Without Hope Without God

Book:Collected Prose

Source: Collected Prose

“It is absurd to ape our betters.”

Absurd Apes

Book:Aesop's fables

Source: Aesop's fables

“The idea of a Supreme Being who creates a world in which one creature is designed to eat another in order to subsist, and then pass a law saying, "Thou shalt not kill," is so monstrously, immeasurably, bottomlessly absurd that I am at a loss to understand how mankind has entertained or given it house room all this long.”

World Long Ideas Law Order House Given Loss Rooms Mankind Creatures Supreme Absurd Cynical Supreme Being

Author:Peter De Vries

“Half way down, he encountered Saphira, who had jammed her head and neck as far up the stair as she could, gouging the wood in her frenzy. Little one. She flicked out her tongue and caught him on the hand with its rough tip. He smiled. Then she arched her neck and tried to pull back, but to no avail. What's wrong? I'm stuck. You're... He could not help it;he laughed even though it hurt. The situation was too absurd.”

Source: The Inheritance Cycle Complete Collection: Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr, Inheritance

“Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable.”

Two Earth Happiness Son Absurd Absurdity Inseparable Myth Of Sisyphus

Book:The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays

Source: The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays

“There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning.”

Ifs Giving Ends Age Existence Goes On Solutions Absurd Old Age Former Parody Former Life

Book:La vieillesse

Source: La vieillesse

“To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.”

“I understood what he was doing, that he had spent four years fulfilling the absurd and tedious duty of graduating from college and now he was emancipated from that world of abstraction, false security, parents, and material excess.”

World Years Parent Four Security College Materials Duty Understood Absurd Excess Four Years Graduates Fulfilling Abstraction Tedious College Graduates

Author:Jon Krakauer

“Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.”

Science Chance Millions Magic Ten Scientist Luck Nine Absurd Magician Good Luck Crops One Chance

Author:Terry Pratchett

“Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains.”

Religion Church Religious Impossible Atheism Remains Atheist Absurd Secular Agnostic Miraculous Vacuums Unreasonable There Is No God Atheistic If There Is A God There Being No God

Book:The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll

Source: The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll

“Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid or produces only atheists or fanatics. As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism, and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests, but so far as respects the good of man in general it leads to nothing here or hereafter.”

“This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, Doc, my brother’s crazy. He thinks he’s a chicken. The doctor says, Well, why don’t you turn him in? And the guy says, I would but I need the eggs. Well I guess that’s pretty much how I feel about relationships. You know they’re totally irrational and crazy and absurd but I guess we keep going through it because, uh, most of us need the eggs.”

Thinking Knows Needs Feels Wells Guy Turns Crazy Brother Humorous Doctors Witty Absurd My Brother Eggs Chickens Keep Going Irrational This Guy Psychiatrist Annie Hall

Author:Woody Allen

“It's quite possible we may actually be looking at some kind of super-sanity here. A brilliant new modification of human perception, more suited to urban life at the end of the twentieth century...He creates himself each day. He sees himself as the lord of misrule and the world as a theatre of the absurd.”

World Humans Kind May Ends Lord Century Perception Theatre Brilliant Absurd Each Day Sanity Urban Twentieth Century Modification Urban Life

Author:Grant Morrison

“Consider it: Who but God could have dreamed a tale so absurd and so heartless?”

Tales Absurd Heartless

Book:God's Fool

Source: God's Fool

“It must be that there is something naturally absurd in a sincere emotion, though why there should be I cannot imagine, unless it is that man, the ephemeral inhabitant of an insignificant planet, with all his pain and all his striving is but a jest in an eternal mind.”

Men Should Mind Pain Emotion Imagine Planets Eternal Strive Absurd Sincere Insignificant Ephemeral Jest

Book:Cakes and Ale

Source: Cakes and Ale

“If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.”

Source: The Ultimate Quotable Einstein

“Women are strange little beasts,' he said to Dr. Coutras. 'You can treat them like dogs, you can beat them till your arm aches, and still they love you.' He shrugged his shoulders. 'Of course, it is one of the most absurd illusions of Christianity that they have souls.”

Littles Said Stills Soul Courses Christianity Love You Dog Strange Arms Beats Illusion Treats Shoulders Absurd Beast Drs Ache

Book:The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence

“Men towering high above such political pygmies, men of refinement, of culture, of ability, are jeered into silence as mollycoddles. It is absurd to claim that ours is the era of individualism. Ours is merely a more poignant repetition of the phenomenon of all history: every effort for progress, for enlightenment, for science, for religious, political, and economic liberty, emanates from the minority, and not from the mass. Today, as ever, the few are misunderstood, hounded, imprisoned, tortured, and killed.”

Source: Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader

“The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.”

Two Reason Three Race Enemy Five Arms Weapons Standing Nuclear Absurd Cold War Gasoline Peacemaking Arms Race Nuclear Arms Petrol Nuclear Arms Race Sagan

Author:Carl Sagan

“A God who kept tinkering with the universe was absurd; a God who interfered with human freedom and creativity was a tyrant. If God is seen as a self in a world of his own, an ego that relates to a thought, a cause separate from its effect, he becomes a being, not Being itself. An omnipotent, all‐knowing tyrant is not so different from earthly dictators who make everything and everybody mere cogs in the machine which they controlled. An atheism that rejects such a God is amply justified.”

“The whole idea of god is absurd. If anything, '2001' shows that what some people call 'god' is simply an acceptable term for their ignorance. What they don't understand, they call 'god' -Stanley Kubrick, interview, 1963”

People Ifs Ideas Whole Shows Term Ignorance Absurd Interviews Acceptable Stanley

Author:Stanley Kubrick

“We no longer believe because it is absurd: it is absurd because we must believe.”

Believe Absurd

Author:Julio Cortazar

“The trouble is that people seem to expect happiness in life. I can't imagine why; but they do. They are unhappy before they marry, and they imagine to themselves that the reason of their unhappiness will be removed when they are married.”

People Believe Persons I Can Reason Seems I Believe Imagine Trouble Married Blame Unhappy Absurd Unhappiness Life Happiness

Author:Nancy Mitford

“Oh! it is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn't. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn't read.”

Should Hard Culture Reading Half Modern Depends Absurd Earnest Importance Of Being Earnest Modern Culture

Book:The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

“How absurd it was that in all seven kingdoms, the weakest and most vulnerable of people - girls, women - went unarmed and were taught nothing of fighting, while the strong were trained to the highest reaches of their skill.”

People Girl Fighting Strong Taught Skills Highest Seven Kingdoms Absurd Vulnerable Unarmed Katsa Graceling

Book:Graceling

Source: Graceling

“he looked to her like an absurd twentieth-century Hamlet, an indecisive figure so mesmerized by onrushing tragedy that he was helpless to divert its course or alter it in any way.”

Way Courses Century Figures Tragedy Absurd Helpless Twentieth Century Indecisive Mesmerized

Book:THE SHINING

Source: THE SHINING

“The mind, placed before any kind of difficulty, can find an ideal outlet in the absurd. Accommodation to the absurd readmits adults to the mysterious realm inhabited by children.”

Mind Kind Children Adults Ideals Difficulty Absurd Mysterious Realms Absurdity Outlets Accommodations

Book:Anthology of Black Humor

Source: Anthology of Black Humor

“I said that the world is absurd, but I was too hasty. This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart.”

World Humans Heart Said This World Longing Absurd Clarity Reasonable Echoes Irrational Human Heart Confrontation Hasty Absurdity Of Life

Book:The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays

Source: The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays

“Beloved, we are always in the wrong, Handling so clumsily our stupid lives, Suffering too little or too long, Too careful even in our selfish loves: The decorative manias we obey Die in grimaces round us every day, Yet through their tohu-bohu comes a voice Which utters an absurd command - Rejoice.”

Littles Long Suffering Dies Voice Stupid Rounds Careful Selfish Absurd Command Beloved Rejoice Mania Selfish Love Grimace Stupid Life

Author:W. H. Auden

“If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous . . . There are two equally dangerous extremes: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason.”

Ifs Two Reason Left Principles Dangerous Extremes Ridiculous Absurd Mysterious Submit

Author:Blaise Pascal

“It is not difficult to deceive the first time, for the deceived possesses no antibodies; unvaccinated by suspicion, she overlooks lateness, accepts absurd excuses, permits the flimsiest patching to repair great rents in the quotidian.”

Firsts Lying Difficult Accepting First Time Excuse Absurd Deceit Permit Deceiving Suspicion Deceived Adultery Honest Truth Being Deceived Lateness Antibodies

Author:John Updike

“Travel was pointless. It removed you from the place in which you had a meaning, and to which you gave meaning in return by dedicating your life to it, and it spirited you away into fairylands where you were, and looked, frankly absurd.”

Return Absurd Pointless Spirited

Author:Salman Rushdie

“life is a story and god is author.life is absurd.I think so.”

Thinking Stories Life Is Absurd

Author:Albert Camus

“Only Christ could have brought us all together, in this place, doing such absurd but necessary things.”

Together Christ Absurd Necessary Things

Book:The Cloister Walk

Source: The Cloister Walk

“Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible, and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.”

Writing Kind Book Found Causes Powerful Opinion Rate Boring Complaining Absurd Inspiring Writing Boring Books

Book:The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings

Source: The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings

“It is clearly absurd to limit the term 'education' to a person's formal schooling.”

Persons Term Limits Absurd Formal Schooling

Author:Murray Rothbard

“Sometimes we think people are like lottery tickets, that they're there to make our most absurd dreams come true.”

People Thinking Sometimes Dream Absurd Tickets Dreams Come True Lottery Shadow Of The Wind Lottery Ticket

Book:The Shadow Of The Wind

Source: The Shadow Of The Wind

“How absurd these words are, such as beast and beast of prey. One should not speak of animals in that way. They may be terrible sometimes, but they're much more right than men...They're never in any embarrassment. They always know what to do and how to behave themselves. They don't flatter and they don't intrude. They don't pretend. They are as they are, like stones or flowers or stars in the sky.”

Knows Men Way Life Should May Sometimes Speak Stars Animal Sky Flower Terrible Stones Absurd Behave Beast Prey Embarrassment Stars In The Sky

Author:Hermann Hesse

“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”

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Absurd Quotes