Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.

Something must happen; that is the reason for most human relationships. Something must happen; even servitude in love, in war, ordeath.

She was waiting, but she didn't know for what. She was aware only of her solitude, and of the penetrating cold, and of a greater weight in the region of her heart.

If absolute truth belongs to anyone in this world, it certainly does not belong to the man or party that claims to possess it.

Thus each of us had to be content to live only for the day, alone under the vast indifference of the sky.

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.

Sometimes at night I would sleep open-eyed underneath a sky dripping with stars. I was alive then.