1.
Proverb -
“Ab absurdo - From the absurd.”
2.
William Butler Yeats -
“What shall I do with this absurdity— O heart, O troubled heart—this caricature, Decrepit age that has been tied to me As to a dog's tail? Never had I more Excited, passionate, fantastical Imagination, nor an ear and eye That more expected the impossible.”
3.
Unknown -
“Only those who attempt the absurd can achieve the impossible.”
4.
Jonathan Swift -
“Brutes find out where their talents lie; A bear will not attempt to fly, A foundered horse will oft debate Before he tries a five barred gate. A dog by instinct turns aside Who sees the ditch too deep and wide, But man we find the only creature Who, led by folly, combats nature; Who, when she loudly cries—Forbear! With obstinacy fixes there; And where the genius least inclines, Absurdly bends his whole designs.”
5.
Agnes Repplier -
“People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization.”
6.
Alexander Pope -
“To pardon those absurdities in ourselves which we condemn in others, is neither better nor worse than to be more willing to be fools ourselves than to have others so.”
7.
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard -
“The absurd ... the fact that with God all things are possible. The absurd is not one of the factors which can be discriminated within the proper compass of the understanding: it is not identical with the improbable, the unexpected, the unforeseen.”
8.
Dr. Samuel Johnson -
“Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.”
9.
Thomas Hobbes -
“The privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject but man only.”
10.
John Gay -
“Life is a jest, and all things show it; I thought so once, but now I know it.”
11.
Marcus Tullius Cicero -
“There is nothing so absurd (or ridiculous) but some philosopher has said it.”
12.
Marcus Tullius Cicero -
“There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.”
13.
Albert Camus -
“The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.”
14.
Albert Camus -
“At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.”
15.
Samuel Butler, the Younger -
“... There can be no doubt about faith and not reason being the ultima ratio. Even Euclid, who has laid himself as little open to the charge of credulity as any writer who ever lived, cannot get beyond this. He has no demonstrable first premise. He requires postulates and axioms which transcend demonstration, and without which he can do nothing. His superstructure indeed is demonstration, but his ground his faith. Nor again can he get further than telling a man he is a fool if he persists in differing from him. He says 'which is absurd,' and declines to discuss the matter further. Faith and authority, therefore, prove to be as necessary for him as for anyone else.”
16.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce -
“Absurdity, n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.”
17.
William Butler Yeats -
“What shall I do with this absurdity - O heart, O troubled heart - this caricature, Decrepit age that has been tied to me As to a dog's tail?”
18.
M. C. Escher -
“Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. I think it's in my basement... let me go upstairs and check.”
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