You know, a man always judges himself by the balance he can strike between the needs of his body and the demands of his mind. You're judging yourself now, Mersaut, and you don't like the sentence.

What is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying.

For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers.

Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter.

If there is a soul, it is a mistake to believe that it is given to us fully created. It is created here, throughout a whole life. And living is nothing else but that long and painful bringing forth.

And never have I felt so deeply at one and the same time so detached from myself and so present in the world.

But what does it mean, the plague? It's life, that's all.