jon’s Reviews > The Plague > Status Update

“the love of god is a hard love. it demands total self-surrender, disdain of our human personality. and yet it alone can reconcile us to suffering and the deaths of children, it alone can justify them, since we cannot understand them, and we can only make god’s will ours.”

“in the memories of those who lived through them, the grim days of plague do not stand out like vivid flames, ravenous and inextinguishable, beaconing a troubled sky, but rather like the slow, deliberate progress of some monstrous thing crushing out all upon its path.”

“no, you haven’t understood that it means exactly that—the same thing over and over again.”

“in the early days, when they thought this epidemic was much like other epidemics, religion held its ground. but once these people realized their instant peril, they gave their thoughts to pleasure.”

“stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.”