Daniel’s Reviews > The Plague > Status Update

“Naturally they retained the attitudes of sadness and suffering, but they had ceased to feel their sting. The habit of despair is worse than despair itself.”

“They are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness.”

“No, you can't understand. You're using the language of reason, not of the heart; you live in a world of abstractions.”

“When a war breaks out, people say: 'It's too stupid; it can't last long.' But though a war may well be 'too stupid,' that doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way;
as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.”

“Perhaps the easiest way of making a town's acquaintance is to ascertain how the people in it work, how they love, and how they die.”