Flann O'Brien (1911–1966) Irish writer
Source: "At Swim-Two-Birds" (1939), P. 9.
Abiding Interests (1997), Foreword
Flann O'Brien (1911–1966) Irish writer
Source: "At Swim-Two-Birds" (1939), P. 9.
Douglas Reeman (1924–2017) British author
For My Country's Freedom, Cap 13 "Loneliness"
“My end is my beginning, and my beginning my end.”
Guillaume de Machaut (1300–1377) French poet and composer
Ma fin est mon commencement
Et mon commencement ma fin.
"Ma fin est mon commencement", line 1; translation from Donald N. Ferguson A History of Musical Thought (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, [1935] 1948) p. 94.
“There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life.”
Federico Fellini (1920–1993) Italian filmmaker
Fellini on Fellini (1976) edited by Anna Keel and Christian Strich; translated by Isabel Quigly.
Variant: There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the passion of life.
Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer
Quoted by Richard Meryman in Mank: The Wit, World, and Life of Herman Mankiewicz. New York: Morrow, 1978, page 255.
“The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) French author and journalist
Review of Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre, published in the newspaper Alger Républicain (20 October 1938), p. 5; also quoted in Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd (2002) by Avi Sagi, p. 43
Context: It is the failing of a certain literature to believe that life is tragic because it is wretched.
Life can be magnificent and overwhelming — that is its whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would be almost easy to live. And M. Sartre's hero does not perhaps give us the real meaning of his anguish when he insists on those aspects of man he finds repugnant, instead of basing his reasons for despair on certain of man's signs of greatness.
The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning. This is a truth nearly all great minds have taken as their starting point. It is not this discovery that is interesting, but the consequences and rules of action drawn from it.
“If I fished only to capture fish, my fishing trips would have ended long ago.”
Zane Grey (1872–1939) American novelist
Tales of Southern Rivers (1924).