“For who would dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for a single moment's human suffering”

“And he knew, also, what the old man was thinking as his tears flowed, and he, Rieux, thought it too: that a loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of priso...”

“I have no idea what's awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing.”

“I have realized that we all have plague, and I have lost my peace. And today I am still trying to find it; still trying to understand all those others and not to be the enemy of anyone. I only know...”

“At such moments the collapse of their courage, willpower, and endurance was so abrupt that they felt they could never drag themselves out of the pit of despond into which they had fallen. Therefore...”

“Do you believe in God, doctor?"No - but what does that really mean? I'm fumbling in the dark, struggling to make something out. But I've long ceased finding that original.”

“For those who are poor in happiness, each time is a first time; happiness never becomes a habit.”

“One should cultivate good habits of memory, for it is capable of making existence a Paradise or an Inferno.”

“Here is a wonderful habit: From time to time stop; move not; speak not; just watch the nature, because this is the best way to realise explicitly the miracles surrounding us!”

“Words are things. The words he is in possession of he cannot be deprived of. Their authority transcends his ignorance of their meaning.”

“We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.”

“The constant reprimands made me hyperconscious of my own performance, and so instead of getting rid of self, I had become embedded in the egoism I was supposed to transcend. Now I was beginning to ...”

“Silence is the mother of truth.”

“Silence is a powerful tool.”