The Plague Quotes
"Everyone agreed that, considering their somewhat extraordinary character, they were out of place there."
"It asks a number of questions relating to the nature of destiny and the human condition."
"The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits."
"Our citizens work hard, but solely with the object of getting rich."
"Naturally they don’t eschew such simpler pleasures as love-making, seabathing, going to the pictures."
"In the evening, on leaving the office, they forgather, at an hour that never varies, in the cafes, stroll the same boulevard, or take the air on their balconies."
"The passions of the young are violent and short-lived; the vices of older men seldom range beyond an addiction to bowling, to banquets and 'socials,' or clubs where large sums change hands on the fall of a card."
"What is more exceptional in our town is the difficulty one may experience there in dying."
"An invalid needs small attentions, he likes to have something to rely on, and that’s natural enough."
"It was as if the earth on which our houses stood were being purged of its secreted humors."
"The only thing I'm interested in," I told him, "is acquiring peace of mind."
"No, I am not an existentialist. Sartre and I are always surprised to see our names linked…"
"What struck me as queer was that he always seemed to want to start a conversation."
"We seldom find a mean between these extremes."
"But other members of our community, not all menials or poor people, were to follow the path down which M. Michel had led the way."
"And it was then that fear, and with fear serious reflection, began."
"For rats died in the street; men in their homes. And newspapers are concerned only with the street."
"The usual taboo, of course; the public mustn’t be alarmed, that wouldn’t do at all."
"Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky."
"Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves."
"A pestilence isn’t a thing made to man’s measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away."
"They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences."
"When a war breaks out, people say: 'It’s too stupid; it can’t last long.' But though a war may well be 'too stupid,' that doesn’t prevent its lasting."
"In the face of so much suffering, one has no right to turn away, not to see."
"To fight abstraction you must have something of it in your own make-up."
"The only way of escaping from that intolerable leisure was to set the trains running again in one’s imagination."
"Plague was for them an unwelcome visitant, bound to take its leave one day as unexpectedly as it had come."
"Calamity has come on you, my brethren, and, my brethren, you deserved it."
"The just man need have no fear, but the evildoer has good cause to tremble."
"For plague is the flail of God and the world His threshing-floor, and implacably He will thresh out His harvest until the wheat is separated from the chaff."
"Yet this calamity was not willed by God. Too long this world of ours has connived at evil, too long has it counted on the divine mercy, on God’s forgiveness."
"The first time this scourge appears in history, it was wielded to strike down the enemies of God."
"Now, at last, you know the hour has struck to bend your thoughts to first and last things."
"It helps men to rise above themselves. All the same, when you see the misery it brings, you’d need to be a madman, or a coward, or stone blind, to give in tamely to the plague."
"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 essential thing was to save the greatest possible number of persons from dying and being doomed to unending separation."
"But every country priest who visits his parishioners and has heard a man gasping for breath on his deathbed thinks as I do."
"I don’t think I’m a coward, not as a rule, anyhow. And I’ve had opportunities of putting it to the test."
"Most people are like that. It’s only a matter of giving them the chance."
"Don’t take it so hard. Why, think of all the swerves and runs and passes you got to make to score a goal."
"What interests me is living and dying for what one loves."
"The only means of righting a plague is, common decency."
"Man is an idea, and a precious small idea, once he turns his back on love."
"For nothing in the world is it worth turning one’s back on what one loves."
"A man can’t cure and know at the same time. So let’s cure as quickly as we can. That’s the more urgent job."
"I’d rather not discuss that with you. We’re working side by side for something that unites us, beyond blasphemy and prayers. And it’s the only thing that matters."
"I grant we should add a third category: that of the true healers."
"But as things are, I’m willing to be as I am; I’ve learned modesty."
"I learned that I had had an indirect hand in the deaths of thousands of people."
"Decent folks must be allowed to sleep easy o’ nights, mustn’t they?"
"But my real interest in life was the death penalty; I wanted to square accounts with that poor blind owl in the dock."
"I’ve learned that we all have plague, and I have lost my peace."
"And I know, too, that we must keep endless watch on ourselves lest in a careless moment we breathe in somebody’s face and fasten the infection on him."
"I try, in short, to be an innocent murderer."
"Does that mean it’s starting all over again?"
"All agreed that the amenities of the past couldn’t be restored at once."
"But in reality behind these mild aspirations lurked wild, extravagant hopes."
"Everyone was struck by his abrupt changes of mood."
"No man can live on the stretch all the time, with his energy and willpower strained to the breaking-point."
"But one couldn’t tell if he had in mind the life or the death of M. Othon."
"The only picture of Tarrou he would always have would be the picture of a man who firmly gripped the steering-wheel of his car."
"To love someone means relatively little; or, rather, that love is never strong enough to find the words befitting it."
"All these people were saying: ‘It was plague. We’ve had the plague here.’"
"The plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good."