what doesn't kill you make you stronger and stronger

You always get exaggerated notions of things you don't know anything about.

Over there, in Europe, all was shame and anger. Here it was exile or solitude, among these languid and agitated madmen who danced in order to die.

In this respect, our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words, they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences. A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they have taken no precautions.

Happiness is generous. It does not subsist on destruction.

The important thing isn't the soundness or otherwise of the argument, but for it to make you think.

The only serious question in life is whether to kill yourself or not.