There is nothing more awful, insulting, and depressing than banality.

It is the trivial, the irrelevant, the sensational, the appeal to obsolete bigotry which naturally give it greatest publicity. In such publicity it becomes a mere vulgar caricature of itself.

It is not extravagance, it is not excitement, it is not excess, or dizziness, or delirium, that chastises habitual pleasure in art, but only dullness.[…] One of the Latin races, having the dullness and keeping wit enough to name it, has the word for it—banalité.

Translation: Nothing so closely approaches a grand style as turgid nonsense: the ridiculous is one of the extremes of the subtle.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

A barren superfluity of words.

Enough of this intolerable inanity! I propose that such loquacity passes beyond the scope of nuisance and over the verge of turpitude.

Everything is absurd.

Indifference to the fine arts comes close to barbarism.

Everyone calls barbarity what he is not accustomed to.

Cada cual llama barbarie a lo que no forma parte de su costumbre.

Ordinary language blinkers the already feeble imagination.

Below the surface of every banality and cliché there lies irony, cynicism, and profundity.

ABSURDITY, n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.