"I am a ridiculous person. Now they call me a madman. That would be a promotion if it were not that I remain as ridiculous in their eyes as before. But now I do not resent it, they are all dear to me now, even when they laugh at me β and, indeed, it is just then that they are particularly dear to me. I could join in their laughter β not exactly at myself, but through affection for them, if I did not feel so sad as I look at them. Sad because they do not know the truth and I do know it. Oh, how hard it is to be the only one who knows the truth! But they won't understand that. No, they won't understand it."
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Fyodor Dostoevsky, in The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877) - Full text online at Wikisource
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Absurdism
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Absurdism
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