What I know, what is certain, what I cannot deny,
what I cannot reject—this is what counts. I can negate everything
of that part of me that lives on vague nostalgias, except this desire
for unity, this longing to solve, this need for clarity and cohesion. I
can refute everything in this world surrounding me that offends or
enraptures me, except this chaos, this sovereign chance and this
divine equivalence which springs from anarchy. I don’t know
whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know
that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me
just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition
mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch,
what resists me—that is what I understand. And these two
certainties—my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the
impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable
principle—I also know that I cannot reconcile them. What other
truth can I admit without lying, without bringing in a hope I lack
and which means nothing within the limits of my condition?

Auteur: Albert Camus