17 quotes
For who would dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for a single moment's human suffering?
The Plague (1948)
There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness.
The Plague (1947)
The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding.
The Plague (1947)
In Oran, as elsewhere, for want of time and thought, people have to love one another without knowing it.
The Plague (1947)
Can one be a saint without God?, that's the problem, in fact the only problem, I'm up against today.
The Plague (1947)
The important thing isn't the soundness or otherwise of the argument, but for it to make you think.
The Plague (1947)
'At my age one's got to be sincere. Lying's too much effort.'
The Plague (1947)
He kept the middle way, that's all: he was the type of man for whom one has an affection of the mild but steady order - which is the kind that wears best.
The Plague (1947)
There always comes a time in history when the person who dares to say that 2+2=4 is punished by death. And the issue is not what reward or what punishment will be the outcome of that reasoning. The issue is simply whether or not 2+2=4.
The Plague (1947)
Yes, everyone sleeps at that hour, and this is reassuring, since the great longing of an unquiet heart is to possess constantly and consciously the loved one...
The Plague (1947)
Yes, there was an element of abstraction and unreality in misfortune. But when an abstraction starts to kill you, you have to get to work on it.
The Plague (1947)
There lay certitude; there, in the daily round. All the rest hung on mere threads and trivial contingencies; you couldn't waste your time on it. The thing was to do your job as it should be done.
The Plague (1947)
...there are more things to admire in men than to despise.
The Plague (1947)
A scourge is not on a human scale, and so people say it isn't real; it's a bad dream that will pass. But is doesn't always pass, and, from bad dream to bad dream, it's the humans who pass, and the humanists first, because they didn't heed the warnings.
The Plague (1947)
At that moment he knew what his mother was thinking, and that she loved him. But he knew, too, that to love someone means relatively little; or, rather, that love is never wrong enough to find the word befitting it.
The Plague (1947)
When a war breaks out, people say: "It's too stupid; it can't last long." But though the war may well be "too stupid," that doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.
The Plague (1947)
"What on earth prompted you to take a hand in this?"
"I don't know. My... my code of morals, perhaps."
"Your code of morals. What code, if I may ask?"
"Comprehension."
The Plague (1947)