Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

Revolution, in order to be creative, cannot do without either a moral or metaphysical rule to balance the insanity of history.

I know that man is capable of great deeds. But if he isn't capable of great emotion, well, he leaves me cold.

Nature is a burning and frigid, transparent and limited universe in which nothing is possible but everything is given.

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.

In Oran, as elsewhere, for want of time and thought, people have to love one another without knowing it.

I enjoyed my own nature to the fullest, and we all know there lies happiness, although, to soothe one another mutually, we occasionally pretend to condemn such joys as selfishness.