Basically, at the very bottom of life, which seduces us all, there is only absurdity, and more absurdity. And maybe that's what gives us our joy for living, because the only thing that can defeat absurdity is lucidity.

We can't do without dominating others or being served.... The essential thing, in sum, is being able to get angry without the other person being able to answer back.

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... There was nothing admirable about this attitude; it was merely logical.

I like people who dream or talk to themselves interminably; I like them, for they are double. They are here and elsewhere.

No code of ethics and no effort are justifiable a priori in the face of the cruel mathematics that command our condition.

Finally, and most of all, words failed him.

Don't wait for the last judgment - it takes place every day.