“Doubts are the innermost corner of our souls. One must not talk about his doubts, whatever they may be.”

“In order to cease being a doubtful case, one has to cease being, that's all.”

“as long as you are alive your case is doubtful”

“No doubt our love was still there, but quite simply it was unusable, heavy to carry, inert inside of us, sterile as crime or condemnation. It was no longer anything except a patience with no future and a stubborn wait.”

“Beauty, no doubt, does not make revolutions. But a day will come when revolutions will have need of beauty.”

“Whatever we may do, excess will always keep its place in the heart of man, in the place where solitude is found. We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others.”

“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.”