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.

If we understood the enigmas of life there would be no need for art.

The real passion of the twentieth century is servitude.

No matter how the sun shone, the sea held forth no more promises.

In Holland, everyone is an expert in painting and in tulips.

Forever I shall be a stranger to myself. In psychology as in logic, there are truths but no truth.

Sometimes, carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement.