Albert Camus Quotes About Plague
-
It is in the thick of calamity that one gets hardened to the truth - in other words, to silence.
→ -
I've seen of enough of people who die for an idea. I don't believe in heroism; I know it's easy and I've learned it can be murderous. What interests me is living and dying for what one loves.
→ -
The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits.
→ -
There are more things to admire in men than to despise.
→ -
No longer were there individual destinies; only a collective destiny, made of plague and emotions shared by all.
→ -
…there's no question of heroism in all this. It's a matter of common decency. That's an idea which may make some people smile, but the only means of fighting a plague is - common decency.
→ -
Paneloux is a man of learning, a scholar. He hasn't come in contact with death; that's why he can speak with such assurance of the truth-with a capital T. But every country priest who visits his parishioners and has heard a man gasping for breath on his deathbed thinks as I do. He'd try to relieve human suffering before trying to point out its goodness.
→ -
They came to know the incorrigible sorrow of all prisoners and exiles, which is to live in company with a memory that serves no purpose.
→ -
What’s true of all the evils in the world is true of plague as well. It helps men to rise above themselves.
→ -
There are plagues, and there are victims, and it's the duty of good men not to join forces with the plagues.
→ -
Again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. ("The Plague")
→ -
But what does it mean, the plague? It's life, that's all.
→ -
On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness.
→ -
And indeed it could be said that once the faintest stirring of hope became possible, the dominion of plague was ended.
→ -
So all a man could win in the conflict between plague and life was knowledge and memories.
→ -
They knew now that if there is one thing one can always yearn for, and sometimes attain, it is human love.
→ -
Without memories, without hope, they lived for the moment only. indeed, the here and now had come to mean everything to them. For there is no denying that the plague had gradually killed off in all of us the faculty not of love only but even of friendship. Naturally enough, since love asks something of the future, and nothing was left us but a series of present moments.
→
Related Authors
-
Soren Kierkegaard Philosopher -
Simone de Beauvoir Writer -
James Joyce Novelist -
Friedrich Nietzsche Philologist -
William Faulkner Writer -
Albert Einstein Theoretical Physicist -
Martin Heidegger Philosopher -
Franz Kafka Writer -
Andre Malraux Novelist -
Jean-Paul Sartre Philosopher -
Thomas Mann Novelist -
Marguerite Duras Writer -
Ernest Hemingway Author -
Victor Hugo Poet -
Samuel Beckett Novelist -
Michel Foucault Philosopher -
Fyodor Dostoevsky Novelist -
Marcel Proust Novelist -
Eugene Ionesco Playwright -
Aldous Huxley Writer