Thus I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my
revolt, my freedom, and my passion. By the mere activity of
consciousness I transform into a rule of life what was an invitation
to death—and I refuse suicide.

Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end. It arouses a revolt that can become fruitful

Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable.

A step lower and strangeness creeps in: perceiving that the world is "dense", sensing to what a degree a stone is foreign and irreducible to us, with what intensity nature or a landscape can negate us. At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise. The primitive hostility of the world rises up to face us across millenia.

Ah ! cher ami, que les hommes sont pauvres en invention. Ils croient toujours qu'on se suicide pour une raison. Mais on peut très bien se suicider pour deux raisons. Non, ça ne leur entre pas dans la tête. Alors, à quoi bon mourir volontairement, se sacrifier à l'idée qu'on veut donner de soi ? Vous mort, ils en profiteront pour donner à votre geste des motifs idiots, ou vulgaires. Les martyrs, cher ami, doivent choisir d'être oubliés, raillés ou utilisés. Quant à être compris, jamais.

A man devoid of hope and conscious of being so has ceased to belong to the future.