The desire to write perfectly of beautiful happenings is, as the saying runs, old as the hills — and as immortal.

What is man that his welfare be considered? An ape who chatters of kinship with the archangels while he very filthily digs for groundnuts. And yet I perceive that this same man is a maimed God. He is condemned under penalty to measure eternity with an hourglass and infinity with a yardstick and what is more, he very nearly does it.

What am I that I am called upon to have prejudices concerning the universe?

The realization that life is absurdand cannot be an end, but only abeginning. This is a truth nearly allgreat minds have taken as their starting point.

For all men have but a little while to live and none knows his fate thereafter. So that a man possesses nothing certainly save a brief loan of his body: and yet the body of man is capable of much curious pleasure.

Love, I take it, must look toward something not quite accessible, something not quite understood.

Patriotism is the religion of hell.