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“Likewise and during every day of an unillustrious life, time carries us. But a moment always comes when we have to carry it. We live on the future: “tomorrow,” “later on,” “when you have made your way,” “you will understand when you are old enough.” Such irrelevancies are wonderful, for, after all, it’s a matter of dying. Yet a day comes when a man notices or says that he is thirty. Thus he asserts his youth. But simultaneously he situates himself in relation to time. He takes his place in it. He admits that he stands at a certain point on a curve that he acknowledges having to travel to its end. He belongs to time, and by the horror that seizes him, he recognizes his worst enemy. Tomorrow, he was longing for tomorrow, whereas everything in him ought to reject it. That revolt of the flesh is the absurd.”
― The Myth of Sisyphus, and Other Essays
― The Myth of Sisyphus, and Other Essays
“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.”
― The Myth of Sisyphus, and Other Essays
― The Myth of Sisyphus, and Other Essays
“Why do we electrocute men for murdering an individual and then pin a purple heart on them for mass slaughter of someone arbitrarily labeled “enemy?”
― The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
― The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
“I have nothing to offer anybody, except my own confusion.”
―
―
“What I know, what is certain, what I cannot deny,
what I cannot reject—this is what counts. I can negate everything
of that part of me that lives on vague nostalgias, except this desire
for unity, this longing to solve, this need for clarity and cohesion. I
can refute everything in this world surrounding me that offends or
enraptures me, except this chaos, this sovereign chance and this
divine equivalence which springs from anarchy. I don’t know
whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know
that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me
just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition
mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch,
what resists me—that is what I understand. And these two
certainties—my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the
impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable
principle—I also know that I cannot reconcile them. What other
truth can I admit without lying, without bringing in a hope I lack
and which means nothing within the limits of my condition?”
― The Myth of Sisyphus, and Other Essays
what I cannot reject—this is what counts. I can negate everything
of that part of me that lives on vague nostalgias, except this desire
for unity, this longing to solve, this need for clarity and cohesion. I
can refute everything in this world surrounding me that offends or
enraptures me, except this chaos, this sovereign chance and this
divine equivalence which springs from anarchy. I don’t know
whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know
that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me
just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition
mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch,
what resists me—that is what I understand. And these two
certainties—my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the
impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable
principle—I also know that I cannot reconcile them. What other
truth can I admit without lying, without bringing in a hope I lack
and which means nothing within the limits of my condition?”
― The Myth of Sisyphus, and Other Essays
Amanda’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Amanda’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
356 books
|
118 friends
356 books
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149 friends
1,800 books
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135 friends
263 books
|
56 friends
239 books
|
3,477 friends
42 books
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122 friends
3,228 books
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268 friends
1,877 books
|
35 friends
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