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'The Plague' Quotes

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  • "Many fledgling moralists in those days were going about our town proclaiming there was nothing to be done about it and we should bow to the inevitable. And Tarrou, Rieux, and their friends might give one answer or another, but its conclusion was always the same, their certitude that a fight must be put up, in this way or that, and there must be no bowing down."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 2

  • "Invariably their epical or prize-speech verbiage jarred on the doctor. Needless to say, he knew the sympathy was genuine enough. But it could be expressed only in the conventional language with which men try to express what unites them with mankind in general; a vocabulary quite unsuited, for example, to Grand's small daily effort."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 2

  • "All this time he'd practically forgotten the woman he loved, so absorbed had he been in trying to find a rift in the walls that cut him off from her. But at this same moment, now that once more all ways of escape were sealed against him, he felt his longing for her blaze up again."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 2

  • "I've seen enough people who die for an idea. I don't believe in heroism; I know it's easy and I've learnt it can be murderous. What interests me is living and dying for what one loves."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 2

  • "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."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 2

  • "No longer were there individual destinies; only a collective destiny, made of plague and emotions shared by all."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 3

  • "By the force of things, this last remnant of decorum went by the board, and men and women were flung into the death-pits indiscriminately. Happily this ultimate indignity synchronized with the plague's last ravages."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 3

  • "So long as the epidemic lasted, there was never any lack of men for these duties. The critical moment came just before the outbreak touched high-water mark, and the doctor had good reason for felling anxious. There was then a real shortage of man-power both for the higher posts and for the rough work."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 3

  • "The truth is that nothing is less sensational than pestilence, and by reason of their very duration great misfortunes are monotonous."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 3

  • "But, really, they were asleep already; this whole period was, for them, no more than a long night's slumber."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 3

  • "The habit of despair is worse than despair itself."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 3

  • "Evening after evening gave its truest, mournfulest expression to the blind endurance that had outlasted love from all our hearts."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 3

  • "The one way of making people hang together is to give 'em a spell of the plague."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 4

  • "Until now I always felt a stranger in this town, and that I'd no concern with you people. But now that I've seen what I have seen, I know that I belong here whether I want it or not. This business is everybody's business."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 4

  • "No, Father. I've a very different idea of love. And until my dying day I shall refuse to love a scheme of things in which children are put to torture."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 4

  • "No, we should go forward, groping our way through the darkness, stumbling perhaps at times, and try to do what good lay in our power. As for the rest, we must hold fast, trusting in the divine goodness, even as to the deaths of little children, and not seeking personal respite."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 4

  • "Nobody is capable of really thinking about anyone, even in the worst calamity."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 4

  • "We can't stir a finger in this world without the risk of bringing death to somebody. Yes, I've been ashamed ever since; I have realized that we all have plague, and I have lost my peace."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 4

  • "What's natural is the microbe. All the rest - heath, integrity, purity (if you like) - is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never falter. The good man, the man who infects hardly anyone, is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 4

  • "Can one be a saint without God? That's the problem, in fact the only problem, I'm up against today."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 4

  • "Its energy was flagging, out of exhaustion and exasperation, and it was losing, with its self-command, the ruthless, almost mathematical efficiency that had been its trump-card hitherto."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 5

  • "Once the faintest stirring of hope became possible, the dominion of the plague was ended."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 5

  • "Our strategy had not changed, but whereas yesterday it had obviously failed, today it seemed triumphant. Indeed, one's chief impression was that the epidemic had called a retreat after reaching all its objectives; it had, so to speak, achieved its purpose."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 5

  • "Yes, he'd make a fresh start, once the period of 'abstractions' was over."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 5

  • "It was as if the pestilence, hounded away by cold, the street-lamps and the crowd, had fled from the depths of the town."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 5

  • "So all a man could win in the conflict between plague and life was knowledge and memories."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 5

  • "Once plague had shut the gates of the town, they had settled down to a life of separation, debarred from the living warmth that gives forgetfulness of all."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 5

  • "If there is one thing one can always yearn for and sometimes attain, it is human love."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 5

  • "What we learn in time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 5

  • "He knew that the tale he had to tell could not be one of final victory. It could be only the record of what had to be done, and what assuredly would have to be done again in the never-ending fight against terror and its relentless onslaughts."
    -Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 5

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