Rule: Start by looking for what is valid in every man.

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")

In every guilty man, there is some innocence. This makes every absolute condemnation revolting.

For those of us who have been thrown into hell, mysterious melodies and the torturing images of a vanished beauty will always bring us, in the midst of crime and folly, the echo of that harmonious insurrection which bears witness, throughout the centuries, to the greatness of humanity.

Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature.

What is human in me is not what is best in me. What is human in me is that I desire, and to obtain what I desire, I believe I would crush anything that stood in my way.

It is not the world that is absurd, nor human thought: the absurd arises when the human need to understand meets the unreasonableness of the world, when 'my appetite for the absolute and for unity' meets 'the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle.'