The Myth of Sisyphus (Vintage International)

Perhaps this notion will become clearer if I risk this shocking statement: the absurd is sin without God.

I want to know whether I can live with what I know and with that alone.

Since nothing is proved, everything can be proved.

He knows simply that in that alert awareness there is no further place for hope.

He recognizes the struggle, does not absolutely scorn reason, and admits the irrational. Thus he again embraces in a single glance all the data of experience and he is little inclined to leap before knowing.

Our appetite for understanding, our nostalgia for the absolute are explicable only in so far, precisely, as we can understand and explain many things. It

To Chestov reason is useless but there is something beyond reason. To an absurd mind reason is useless and there is nothing beyond reason.

We turn toward God only to obtain the impossible. As for the possible, men suffice.”

The intoxication of the irrational and the vocation of rapture turn a lucid mind away from the absurd.