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What made me run away was doubtless not so much the fear of settling down, but of settling down permanently in something ugly.

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The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

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Sometimes at night I would sleep open-eyed underneath a sky dripping with stars. I was alive then.

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On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or...more

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Against eternal injustice, man must assert justice, and to protest against the universe of grief, he must create happiness.

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The literal meaning of life is whatever you're doing that prevents you from killing yourself.

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An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the ...more

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In order to exist just once in the world, it is necessary never again to exist.

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I cannot stand the company of men. They flatter or they judge. I can stand neither of the two.

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I think my life is of great importance, but I also think it is meaningless.

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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 respectab...more

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It is necessary to fall in love – the better to provide an alibi for all the despair we are going to feel anyway.

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There is no fate which cannot be surmounted by scorn.

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Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.

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If there were a party of those who aren't sure they're right, I'd belong to it.