Absurdity

“ But there is a keen eye for subtle absurdity, a glance which unveils affectation and penetrates bombast, the most delicate sense of incongruity, the liveliest disrelish for all the moral and intellectual qualities which constitute the Bore, and a vein of personal raillery as refined as it is pungent. ”

“ It is a matter of course for him to be struck with the absurdity of the romantic or singular in any way, to whom every thing out of the beaten track is absurd; and ‘to turn what is serious into farce’ by transferring the same expressions to perfectly indifferent and therefore contemptible subjects. ”

“ But the saddest of all is that no one is revolted by such absurdity. In reality, we are living in a period when there is no longer such a thing as ridicule or absurdity. Anything is said and anything is printed without shame. ”

“ This absurdity, indeed, is chiefly observable in those philosophical discussions with which he is in the wicked habit of interspersing his fictions, and springs only from a rabid anxiety to look wise—to appear profound—even when wisdom is quite out of place, and profundity the quintessence of folly. ”

“ I am thus justified in saying that the feeling of absurdity does not spring from the mere scrutiny of a fact or an impression, but that it bursts from the comparison between a bare fact and a certain reality, between an action and the world that transcends it. The absurd is essentially a divorce. It lies in neither of the elements compared; it is born of their confrontation. ”

“ An absurdity may be the starting-point of the most dangerous complications. How is one to guard against it? It puts to rout one’s intelligence. The more intelligent one is the less one suspects an absurdity. ”

“ From the moment absurdity is recognized, it becomes a passion, the most harrowing of all. But whether or not one can live with one’s passions, whether or not one can accept their law, which is to burn the heart they simultaneously exalt—that is the whole question. ”

“ Nothing of a healthy, wholesome, vigorous, vital, individual, personal kind; but some pitiful pretence of wit or humor, having for its vague or indefinite object ideal or general, abstract, impersonal, or, so to speak, invisible intangible subjects, wanting all the vivacious pungent stimulus that belongs to real individual absurdity, and the direct ridicule of it, judiciously and dexterously applied; the only efficient—I had almost said legitimate—object of a rational creature's amusement. ”

“ About this question the tragi-comic web of human absurdity thickens to its closest. When has there ever been a lucid view or ever will be of this great business? Here is the common madness of our species, here is all a tissue of fine unreasonableness—to which, no doubt, we are in the present paper infinitesimally adding. ”

“ For if absurdity be the subject of laughter, doubt you not but great boldness is seldom without some absurdity. ”

“ But while this characteristic clue to absurdity helps on the ridicule, it also softens and harmonises its excesses; and the ludicrous is here blended with a certain beauty and decorum, from this very truth of habit and sentiment, or from the principle of similitude in dissimilitude. The devotion to nonsense, and enthusiasm about trifles, is highly affecting as a moral lesson: it is one of the striking weaknesses and greatest happinesses of our nature. ”

“ The ludicrous is where there is the same contradiction between the object and our expectations, heightened by some deformity or inconvenience, that is, by its being contrary to what is customary or desirable; as the ridiculous, which is the highest degree of the laughable, is that which is contrary not only to custom but to sense and reason, or is a voluntary departure from what we have a right to expect from those who are conscious of absurdity and propriety in words, looks, and actions. ”

“ At any streetcorner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face. ”

“ That the satirical element in this romantico-realistic form of fiction should be characterized by humor, exposure, and comparative rarity, instead of wit, exaggeration, and ubiquity, is inevitable, since the former qualities accord not only with realism but with one another.
Humor is the comic sense which is amused by things as they are, whereas wit either creates the absurdity or ferrets it out of obscurity. ”

“ The sense of humour, which is a necessary element in every other healthy sense, and which so often keeps us from going astray, by suddenly revealing to us the inherent absurdity of our proposed action, is one of the first faculties to succumb to the blighting influence of an ultra-legal conception of life. ”

“ And presently he grew conscious that the gods had played a very good practical joke on him, and he laughed at himself mirthlessly. It is not very comfortable to have the gift of being amused at one's own absurdity. ”

“ And yet the absurdity of the thing prevents serious consideration.
The fact is that our minds are so thoroughly attuned to the commonplace that we have lost the faculty of imaginative vision of unusual things. ”

“ The assumption that the correct answers given to questions that evening—though not remarkable, comparatively—were ‘accidental,’ bears absurdity upon the face of it. Such ‘opinions’ throw no light upon the mystery, but leave it still more inexplicable to the general intelligent mind. ”

“ I say that there are many chances, for we must always allow for the part played by absurdity in the most logical and commonplace events. But, of course, it is impossible to see things as they are and not to take account of the absurd and the disproportionate. ”

“ At this he laughed, and made several pithy and sound remarks on the aptitude of men to take any absurdity on the credit of great names, and the disposition to find good reasons for practices, however irrational or unjust, that had got to form a part of our habits. ”

“ Every absurdity has now a champion to defend it; ”

“ When in the midst of what appears a wilful torrent of absurdity, there bursts out a rush of earnest and instinctive nature. We could quote enough in confirmation of this assertion to make a moderate volume. ”

“ His insanity takes the form of harmless delusion, and the absurdity of his ways and talk enables the author to lighten the sombreness without weakening the moral, in a way that ought to win all boys to his side."—The Critic. ”

“ Bodding's explanation, because, if anything's absurd everything's absurd, or, rather, has in it some degree or aspect of absurdity, and we've never had experience with any state except something somewhere between ultimate absurdity and final reasonableness. ”

“ A book may be amusing with numerous errors, or it may be very dull without a single absurdity. ”

“ There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity. ”

“ There seems to be a love of absurdity and falsehood as well as mischief in the human mind, and the most ridiculous as well as barbarous superstitions have on this account been the most acceptable to it. ”

“ In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of this world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods. ”

“ But almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble. ”

“ The words kept coming back to him, statement of a mystical truth and a palpable absurdity. ”

“ There is something peculiar in a small boat upon the wide sea. Over the lives borne from under the shadow of death there seems to fall the shadow of madness. When your ship fails you, your whole world seems to fail you; the world that made you, restrained you, took care of you. It is as if the souls of men floating on an abyss and in touch with immensity had been set free for any excess of heroism, absurdity, or abomination. ”

“ He was ashamed at baiting the man, realizing that the absurdity of the story rested in the immaturity of the attitude combined with the sophisticated method of its narration. ”

“ Every one who has had the opportunity of making the comparison will remember that the effect produced on him by some witticisms is closely akin to the effect produced on him by subtle reasoning which lays open a fallacy or absurdity, and there are persons whose delight in such reasoning always manifests itself in laughter. This affinity of wit with ratiocination is the more obvious in proportion as the species of wit is higher and deals less with less words and with superficialities than with the essential qualities of things. ”

“ Satire is a witty and severe Attack of mischievous Habits or Vices;
Ridicule is a free Attack of any Motly Composition, wherein a real or affected Excellence and Defect both jointly appear, glaring together, and mocking each other, in the same Subject.
Hence the Aim of Raillery, is to please you, by some little Embarrassment of a Person; Of Satire, to scourge Vice, and to deliver it up to your just Detestation; And of Ridicule, to set an Object in a mean ludicrous Light, so as to expose it to your Derision and Contempt. ”

“ This world would be a horrible comedy, a causeless illusion, and human existence a jest perpetrated by nothingness,—all would be but a lie, if there were not a just and kind God!... That which is absurd cannot be true. ”

“ The same may be true of both the satirical and the merely entertaining aims: in the first, the emphasis on the traits held up to ridicule runs the risk of going beyond the bounds of the normal; in the second, the curious, the marvelous, the mysterious, or the amusing may be sought for at the expense of the natural, with the result that the reader's skepticism prevents his submitting himself to the illusion of reality necessary for the enjoyment of the pleasure or the advantages to be derived from imaginative art. ”

“ When we amuse ourselves with inquiring into the history of human folly—that most comprehensive of all histories—which includes, at least for many ages, the whole history of philosophy; or rather, to use a word more appropriate than amusement,—when we read with regret the melancholy annals of genius aspiring to be pre-eminently frivolous, and industry labouring to be ignorant, we often discover absurdities of the grossest kind, which almost cease to be absurdities, on account of other absurdities, probably as gross, which accompany them ”

“ These arrows, winged by fancy, sharpened by wit, poisoned by truth, always reached the centre.
It is claimed by many that anything, the best and holiest, can be ridiculed. As a matter of fact, he who attempts to ridicule the truth, ridicules himself. He becomes the food of his own laughter. ”

“ This form of satiric humour arises, not from the discrepancy between how we ought to behave and the way we do behave, but from a pervading sense of the ridiculousness of everything. It’s a response to life which affirms no coherent moral alternative simply because there is no such thing: the very faith in such a possibility is as absurd as everything else. ”

“ But when experience has shown that it was better to strip than to cover up the body and when the ridiculous effect that this plan had to the eye had given way before the arguments establishing its superiority, it was at the same time, as I imagine, demonstrated that he is a fool who thinks anything ridiculous but that which is evil, and who attempts to raise a laugh by assuming any object to be ridiculous but that which is unwise and evil. ”

“ The ludicrous, or comic, is the unexpected loosening or relaxing this stress below its usual pitch of intensity, by such an abrupt transposition of the order of our ideas, as taking the mind unawares, throws it off its guard, startles it into a lively sense of pleasure, and leaves no time nor inclination for painful reflections. ”

“ Of course a mass of absurdities would grow up around the central germ and a multitude of horrors sprout forth. While the common throng would unquestioningly receive all these ridiculous and revolting particulars, they could not but provoke doubt, satire, flat rejection, from the bolder and keener wits. ”

“ Now, therefore, be ye not mockers, lest your bands be made strong.
The sense of the ludicrous is excited by words, ideas, images, or objects in which unexpected resemblances are seen in things previously considered incongruous, or in which incongruity is perceived where complete resemblance was supposed. The perception of the ludicrous varies. Where it exists in connection with the ability to convey the ludicrous idea in language, it is called wit. It is one of God’s gifts. There is no reason why it should not be exercised. The evil is in untimeliness and excess. ”

“ Of course this will scarcely apply in those cases in which, by abstraction, we overlook the creative action of the mind, and regard its humorous productions as ludicrous. Nor does it hold good where from long exercise of ingenuity a habit has been formed and amusing fancies spring up, as it were naturally, and so involuntarily that, for the moment, we see them only as ludicrous. This view changes almost instantaneously, and beneath it we often find the best humour. ”

“ For humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals. What monstrous absurdities and paradoxes have resisted whole batteries of serious arguments, and then crumbled swiftly into dust before the ringing death-knell of a laugh! ”