“As in all religions, man is freed of the weight of his own life.”

“man has an idea of a better world than this. But better does not mean different, it means unified… Religion or crime, every human endeavor in fact, finally obeys this unreasonable desire and claims to give life a form it does not have.”

“Any thought that abandons unity glorifies diversity. Anddiversity is the home of art. The only thought to liberate the mindis that which leaves it alone, certain of its limits and of itsimpending end. No doctrine tempts it. It awaits the ripening of thework and of life. Detached from it, the work will once more give abarely muffled voice to a soul Forever freed from hope. Or it willgive voice to nothing if the creator, tired of his activity, intends toturn away. That is equivalent.”

“I knew a man who gave twenty years of his life to a scatterbrained woman, sacrificing everything to her, his friendships, his work, the very respectability of his life and who one evening recognized that he had never loved her. He had been bored, thats all, bored like most people. Hence he had made himself out of whole cloth a life full of complications and drama. Something must happen and that explains most human commitments. Something must happen even loveless slavery, even war or death.”

“A man wants to earn money in order to be happy, and his whole effort and the best of a life are devoted to the earning of that money. Happiness is forgotten; the means are taken for the end.”

“And for all his life it would be kindness and love that made him cry, never pain or persecution, which on the contrary only reinforced his spirit and his resolution.”

“It is a matter of persisting. At a certain point on his path the absurd man is tempted. History is not lacking in either religions or prophets, even without gods. He is asked to leap. All he can reply is that he doesn't fully understand, that it is not obvious. Indeed, he does not want to do anything but what he fully understands. He is assured that this is the sin of pride, but he does not understand the notion of sin; that perhaps hell is in store, but he has not enough imagination to visualize that strange future; that he is losing immortal life, but that seems to him an idle consideration. An attempt is made to get him to admit his guilt. He feels innocent. To tell the truth, that is all he feels — his irreparable innocence. This is what allows him everything. Hence, what he demands of himself is to live solely with what he knows, to accommodate himself with what is, and to bring in nothing that is not certain. He is told that nothing is. But this at least is certainty. And it is with this that he is concerned: he wants to find out if it is possible to live without appeal.”