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It is not in the world of ideas that life is lived. Life is lived for better or worse in life, and to a man in life, his life can be no more absurd than it can be the opposite of absurd, whatever that opposite may be.
Archibald MacLeishIn the whole of your absurd past you discover so much that's absurd, so much deceit and credulity, that it might be a good idea to stop being young this minute, to wait for youth to break away from you and pass you by, to watch it going away, receding in the distance, to see all its vanity, run your hand through the empty space it has left behind, take a last look at it, and then start moving, make sure your youth has really gone, and then calmly, all by yourself, cross to the other side of Time to see what people and things really look like.
Louis-Ferdinand CelineThere's absolutely no reason for NATO to be sticking its fingers up the nostrils of Russia at every orifice. I mean, it's absurd. It's absolutely absurd.
Rashid KhalidiComedy is serious - deadly serious. Never, never try to be funny! The actors must be serious. Only the situation must be absurd. Funny is in the writing, not in the performing. If the situation isn't absurd, no amount of joke will help.
Mel BrooksI have sometimes seen women, who would have been sensible enough, if they would have been content not to be called women of sense--but by aiming at what they had not, they only proved absurd--for sense cannot be counterfeited.
Horace WalpoleAdvice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey's end.
Marcus Tullius CiceroNothing can be believed unless it is first understood; and that for any one to preach to others that which either he has not understood nor they have understood is absurd.
Peter AbelardI just don't know when we all decided that if it doesn't fit in a Happy Meal box, it's not for kids. I remember flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz, and I grew up watching Monty Python. I think that kids can handle a lot more than we give them credit for, especially when it comes to the absurd.
Gore VerbinskiI have been a hundred times on the point of killing myself, but still was fond of life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our worst instincts. What can be more absurd than choosing to carry a burden that one really wants to throw to the ground? To detest, and yet to strive to preserve our existence? To caress the serpent that devours us, and hug him close to our bosoms till he has gnawed into our hearts?
VoltaireI don't think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we shrink from the immensity of the purpose we are here for.
Norman MailerThe entrance into Jerusalem has all the elements of the theatre of the absurd: the poor king; truth comes riding on a donkey; symbolic actions - even parading without a permit!
David Edward KirkThere are countries in which it would be as absurd to establish popular governments as to abolish all the restraints in a school or to unite all the strait-waistcoats in a madhouse.
Thomas B. MacaulayAl Bernstein has seen cable television sports grow up. In 30 Years/30 Undeniable Truths he looks at his time in the industry through a prism that is unique to him. This book gives the reader an insight into the sometimes absurd world of television sports. There is a 31st undeniable truth: Al Bernstein is a truly funny man.
Barry TompkinsIt's absurd and quite tragic the way people have managed to pit science against faith. They aren't in conflict at all - they're long lost dance partners. I don't divide the world up into Christians and other people - we are all human beings, brothers and sisters, and we embrace truth wherever we find it, whether that's in a lab, a field or a cathedral. Because sometimes you need a scientist and sometimes you need a poet.
Rob BellThe crisis [the Great Depression] discovered a great man in Franklin Roosevelt...None too soon he has carried America forward to the second stage of democratic realization. His New Deal involves such collective controls of the national business that it would be absurd to call it anything but socialism, were it not for a prejudice lingering on from the old individualist days against that word...Both Roosevelt and Stalin were attempting to produce a huge, modern, scientifically organized, socialist state, the one out of a warning crisis and the other out of a chaos.
H. G. WellsIt is absurd for the Evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.
Gilbert K. ChestertonIf one lives in a country where racism is held valid and practiced in all ways of life eventually, no matter whether one is a racist or a victim, one comes to feel the absurdity of life....Racism generated from whites is first of all absurd. Racism creates absurdity among blacks as a defense mechanism.
Chester HimesWhat is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood.
Aldous HuxleyIf it's comedy, you taken an absurd comedic notion and you apply it to reality. If it's horror, if it's a thriller, you do the same thing.
Jordan PeeleIt is as absurd to say that a man can't love one woman all the time as it is to say that a violinist needs several violins to play the same piece of music.
Honore de BalzacIn any case, the idea of giving "all" of reality is overly simple and absurd.
Michelangelo AntonioniJay-Z's a guy that wears the Che Guevara t-shirt and he doesn't realize Che Guevara was a racist. Che Guevara was a murderer and a killer. So look, he's an entertainer, obviously. He's not in the middle of any public discourse here. But I think it's important to point out when people take stances like this that are absurd.
Marco RubioYoung people, however, tend to ignore the customs of their elders. Adolescent rebellion has been responsible for all manner of absurd costumes. The more ridiculous a certain fashion is, the more adolescents will cling to it.
David EddingsEvery man knows about a particular body part that often seems to have a mind of its own. And every woman knows how absurd men become when that is the body part they allow to influence their choices and decisions.
Neale Donald WalschHow 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.
Kristin CashoreI don't know. I think it's funny! I think it's funny! I go, what? It's so absurd. I'm alone.
Danny DeVitoBut Lord! To see the absurd nature of Englishmen that cannot forbear laughing and jeering at everything that looks strange.
Samuel PepysWhen I write, I create really absurd situations which become false because I am after the joke.
Sally PhillipsI don't take so-called "vacations" often. In fact vacations are more stressful than the lives my wife and I worked hard to set up for ourselves in New York. It seems like being on vacation is like normal living, which is not very satisfying. It means we're figuring out what to make for lunch today, and that seems like such an absurd way to live. The issue of dealing with that doesn't seem to be so prominent back home. It sounds so silly and ridiculous, but it's really the way it is. We love what we do, so I prefer being in the studio; that's really living for me.
Ryan McGinnessAll this argument is the temperature going up or not, it's absurd. Of course it's going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we're coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we're putting more carbon dioxide into the air.
Reid BrysonThe quality you most admire in a woman? Courage moral and physical: "anima"-the ability to visualize the mind and need of a man. Also a sense of the absurd.
Christopher HitchensI remember watching Meryl Streep in, The River Wild. There's this scene where she's has a gun pointed at her, it's absurd in a lot of ways. Someone pulls a gun on her I think, I'm not really fully aware of the scene and she just, she starts, you see her terrified. And then all of a sudden she starts to burst out laughing. She starts laughing. Like she can't stop laughing. Because she's terrified and she's emotional and there are no rules to what you're supposed to feel. That to me is like A number one, that's the thing I have to remind myself all the time.
Jake Gyllenhaala man who has decided upon self-destruction is far removed from mundane affairs, and to sit down and write his will would be, at that moment, an act just as absurd as winding up oneโs watch, since together with the man, the whole world is destroyed; the last letter is instantly reduced to dust and, with it, all the postmen; and like smoke, vanishes the estate bequeathed to a nonexistent progeny.
Vladimir NabokovHe that dies a martyr proves that he was not a knave, but by no means that he was not a fool; since the most absurd doctrines are not without such evidence as martyrdom can produce. A martyr, therefore, by the mere act of suffering, can prove nothing but his own faith.
Charles Caleb ColtonGiving government aid to a bank basically transforms it into a utility. The huge salaries in this sector are only a symptom of a more profound misalignment. The profitability of the finance industry has been excessive. [...] That was absurd.
George SorosI think the novel is essentially a comic form (tragedy is for the theatre), not meaning by that full of jokes, but that it is about the absurd detail of human life, the way in which one cannot fully understand what is happening. Life is muddle and jumble and ends inconclusively, and when this is presented with great comic art the sorrows of human life can be truthfully conveyed; one is moved by the spectacle, and feels that something truthful has been told in a magic way.
Iris MurdochThe kingdom that Jesus preached and lived was all about a glorious, uproarious, absurd generosity.
N. T. WrightIn France those absurd perversions of the art of war which covered themselves under the name of chivalry were more omnipotent than in any other country of Europe. The strength of the armies of Philip and John of Valois was composed of a fiery and undisciplined aristocracy which imagined itself to be the most efficient military force in the world, but which was in reality little removed from an armed mob.
Charles William Chadwick OmanEnglish plays, Atrocious in content, Absurd in form, Objectionable in action, Execrable EnglishTheatre.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheI like Paul Ryan, and to a certain extent, I feel bad for him. But this is a moment of moral choice. And if he says that Hillary Clinton is worse than a openly racist, Muslim-hating misogynist who wants to build a wall to exclude Mexicans, who thinks that a judge, an American judge because of his Mexican lineage cannot be fair to him, if you`re saying that Hillary Clinton is worse than all that, then I just think that that just is ridiculous, it`s absurd, and it really starts to damage the speaker`s credibility.
Keith Ellison