Plague Albert Camus Quotes

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 know that man is capable of great deeds. But if he isn't capable of great emotion, well, he leaves me cold.

The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits.

But, you know, I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don't really appeal to me, I imagine. What interests me is being a man.

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 prisons, of one's work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart.

But what does it mean, the plague? It's life, that's all.

They knew now that if there is one thing one can always yearn for, and sometimes attain, it is human love.

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

Well, personally, I've seen enough of people who die for an idea. I don't believe in heroism; I know it's easy and I've learned that it can be murderous. What interests me is living and dying for what one loves.

There are more things to admire in men then to despise.

Am well. Thinking of you always. Love

All I can say is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims– and as far as possible one must refuse to be on the side of the pestilence.

But it's not easy. I've been thinking it over for years. While we loved each other we didn't need words to make ourselves understood. But people don't love forever. A time came when I should have found the words to keep her with me, only I couldn't.

The evil in the world comes almost always from ignorance, and goodwill can cause as much damage as ill-will if it is not enlightened. People are more often good than bad, though in fact that is not the question. But they are more or less ignorant and this is what one calls vice or virtue, the most appalling vice being the ignorance that thinks it knows everything and which consequently authorizes itself to kill. The murderer's soul is blind, and there is no true goodness or fine love without the greatest possible degree of clear-sightedness.

What’s true of all the evils in the world is true of plague as well. It helps men to rise above themselves.

Thus each of us had to be content to live only for the day, alone under the vast indifference of the sky.

There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.

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

Who taught you all this, doctor?" The reply came promptly: "Suffering.

But again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. The schoolteacher is well aware of this. And the question is not one of knowing what punishment or reward attends the making of this calculation. The question is one of knowing whether two and two do make four

how hard it must be to live only with what one knows and what one remembers, cut off from what one hopes for!

In fact, it comes to this: nobody is capable of really thinking about anyone, even in the worst calamity. For really to think about someone means thinking about that person every minute of the day, without letting one’s thoughts be diverted by anything- by meals, by a fly that settles on one’s cheek, by household duties, or by a sudden itch somewhere. But there are always flies and itches. That’s why life is difficult to live.

What on earth prompted you to take a hand in this?" "I don't know. My… my code of morals, perhaps." "Your code of morals. What code, if I may ask?" "Comprehension.

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.

It is in the thick of calamity that one gets hardened to the truth - in other words, to silence.

I was very fond of you, but now I’m so, so tired. I’m not happy to go, but one needn't be happy to make another start.

I've seen of enough of people who die for an idea. I don't believe in heroism; I know it's easy and I've learned it can be murderous. What interests me is living and dying for what one loves.

On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But 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 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.

من بیشتر با شکست یافتگان احساس همدردی می‌کنم تا با مقدسین. گمان می‌کنم که من قهرمانی و تقدس را زیاد نمی‌پسندم. آنچه برایم جالب است انسان بودن است.

And indeed it could be said that once the faintest stirring of hope became possible, the dominion of plague was ended.

There is always a certain hour of the day and of the night when a man’s courage is at its lowest ebb, and it was that hour only that he feared.

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.

A loveless world is a dead world.

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.

I've been thinking it over for years. While we loved each other we didn't need words to make ourselves understood. But people don't love forever. A time came when I should have found the words to keep her with me, only I couldn't." - Grant

he's incapable of suffering for a long time, or being happy for a long time. Which means that he's incapable of anything really worth while.

there's no question of heroism in all this. It's a matter of common decency. That's an idea which may make some people smile, but the only means of fighting a plague is - common decency.

After a short silence the doctor raised himself a little in his chair and asked if Tarrou had an idea of the path to follow for attaining peace. "Yes, he replied. "The path of sympathy.

le mal qui est dans le monde vient presque toujours de l'ignorance

Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.

Whereas during those months of separation time had never gone quickly enough for their liking and they were wanting to speed its flight, now that they were in sight of the town they would have liked to slow it down and hold each moment in suspense, once the breaks went on and the train was entering the station. For the sensation, confused perhaps, but none the less poingant for that, of all those days and weeks and months of life lost to their love made them vaguely feel they were entitled to some compensation; this present hour of joy should run at half the speed of those long hours of waiting.

Only the sea, murmurous behind the dingy checkerboard of houses, told of the unrest, the precariousness, of all things in this world.

Without memories, without hope, they lived for the moment only. Indeed, the here and now had come to mean everything to them. For there is no denying that the plague had gradually killed off in all of us the faculty not of love only but even of friendship. Naturally enough, since love asks something of the future, and nothing was left us but a series of present moments.

But what are a hundred million deaths? When one has served in a war, one hardly knows what a dead man is, after a while. And since a dead man has no substance unless one has actually seen him dead, a hundred million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination.

It is forbidden to spit on cats in plague-time.

To state quite simply what we learn in time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise.

At that moment he knew what his mother was thinking, and that she loved him. But he knew, too, that to love someone means relatively little; or, rather, that love is never strong enough to find the words befitting it. Thus he and his mother would always love each other silently. And one day she--or he--would die, without ever, all their lives long, having gone farther than this by way of making their affection known.

Thus, in a middle course between these heights and depths, they drifted through life rather than lived, the prey of aimless days and sterile memories, like wandering shadows that could have acquired substance only by consenting to root themselves in the solid earth of their distress.

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.

For there is no denying that the plague had gradually killed off in all of us the faculty not of love only but even of friendship. Naturally enough, since love asks something of the future, and nothing was left us but a series of present moments.

All who, while unable to be saints but refusing to bow down to pestilences, strive their utmost to be healers.

That sensation of a void within which never left us, that irrational longing to hark back to the past or else to speed up the march of time, and those keen shafts of memory that stung like fire.

The great longing of an unquiet heart is to possess constantly and consciously the loved one, or, failing that, to be able to plunge the loved one, when a time of absence intervenes, into a dreamless sleep timed to last unbroken until the day they meet again.

since the order of the world is shaped by death, mightn't it be better for God if we refuse to believe in Him and struggle with all our might against death, without raising our eyes towards the heaven where He sits in silence?

The truth is I wasn't brought into the world to write newspaper articles. But it's quite likely I was brought into the world to live with a woman.

Hostile to the past, impatient of the present, and cheated of the future, we were much like those whom men's justice, or hatred, forces to live behind prison bars.

The evil that is in the world comes out of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. One the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But 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.

Each of us has the plague within him; no one, no one on earth is free from it. And i know, too, that we must keep endless watch on ourselves lest in a careless moment we breath in someone's face and fasten the infection on him. What's natural is the microbe. All the rest – health, integrity, purity (if you like) – is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never falter.

حين تنشب حرب ما يقول الناس " إنها لن تدوم طويلاً ، فهذا أمر مفرط في السخف" ولا ريب في أن حرباً ما هي أمر مفرط في السخف، ولكن ذلك لا يمنعها أن تدوم، إن السخف يلح دائماً ،

Finally, and most of all, words failed him.

At the beginning of a pestilence and when it ends, there's always a propensity for rhetoric. In the first case, habits have not yet been lost; in the second, they're returning. It is in the thick of a calamity that one gets hardened to the truth - in other words, to silence.

On moonlight nights the long, straight street and dirty white walls, nowhere darkened by the shadow of a tree, their peace untroubled by footsteps or a dog's bark, glimmered in the pale recession. The silent city was no more than an assemblage of huge, inert cubes, between which only the mute effigies of great men, carapaced in bronze, with their blank stone or metal faces, conjured up a sorry semblance of what the man had been. In lifeless squares and avenues these tawdry idols lorded it under the lowering sky; stolid monsters that might have personified the rule of immobility imposed on us, or, anyhow, its final aspect, that of a defunct city in which plague, stone, and darkness had effectively silenced every voice.

Question: how can one manage not to lose time? Answer: experience it at its full length. Means: spend days in the dentist's waiting room on an uncomfortable chair; live on one's balcony on a Sunday afternoon; listen to lectures in a language that one does not understand, choose the most roundabout and least convenient routes on the railway (and, naturally, travel standing up); queue at the box-office for theatres and so on and not take one's seat; etc.

Personne n'est capable réellement de penser à personne, fût-ce dans le pire des malheurs. Car penser réellement à quelqu'un, c'est y penser minute après minute, sans être distrait par rien, ni les soins du ménage, ni la mouche qui vole, ni les repas, ni une démangeaison. Mais il y a toujours des mouches et des démangeaisons. C'est pourquoi la vie est difficile à vivre.

There had been as many plagues in the world as there had been wars, yet plagues and wars always find people equelly unprepared.

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

Rats died in the street; men in their homes. And newspapers are concerned only with the street.

In different degrees, in every part of the town, men and women had been yearning for a reunion, not of the same kind for all, but for all alike ruled out. Most of them had longed intensely for an absent one, for the warmth of a body, for love, or merely a life that habit had endeared. Some, often without knowing it, suffered from being deprived of the company of friends and from their inability to get in touch with them through the usual channels of friendship—letters, trains, and boats. Others, fewer these... had desired a reunion with something they couldn’t have defined, but which seemed to them the only desirable thing on earth. For want of a better name, they sometimes called it peace.

In short, from then on, we accepted our status as prisoners; we were reduced to our past alone and even if a few people were tempted to live in the future, they quickly gave it up, as far as possible, suffering the wounds that the imagination eventually inflicts on those who trust in it.

By giving too much importance to fine actions one may end by paying an indirect but powerful tribute to evil, because in so doing one implies that such fine actions are only valuable because they are rare, and that malice or indifference are far more common motives in the actions of men.

An endless defeat

اما انسان همین‌که عادت کرد، روزگارش بی‌دردسر می‌گذرد.

The whole town rushed outside to celebrate this crowded minute when the time of suffering had ended and the time of forgetting had not yet begun.

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 they forced themselves never to think about the problematic day of escape, to cease looking to the future, and always to keep, so to speak, their eyes fixed on the ground at their feet. But, naturally enough, this prudence, this habit of feinting with their predicament and refusing to put up a fight, was ill rewarded. For, while averting that revulsion which they found so unbearable, they also deprived themselves of those redeeming moments, frequent enough when all is told, when by conjuring up pictures of a reunion to be, they could forget about the plague. Thus, in a middle course between these heights and depths, they drifted through life rather than lived, the prey of aimless days and sterile memories, like wandering shadows that could have acquired substance only by consenting to root themselves in the solid earth of their distress.

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.

Sometimes at midnight, in the great silence of the sleep-bound town, the doctor turned on his radio before going to bed for the few hours’ sleep he allowed himself. And from the ends of the earth, across the thousands of miles of land and sea, kindly, well-meaning speakers tried to voice their fellow-feeling, and indeed did so, but at the same time proved the utter incapacity of every man truly to share in suffering that he cannot see.

Therefore the first progressive step for a mind overwhelmed by the strangeness of things is to realize that this feeling of strangeness is shared with all men and that human reality, in its entirety, suffers from the distance which separates it from the rest of the universe. The malady experienced by a single man becomes a mass plague. In our daily trials rebellion plays the same role as does the "cogito" in the realm of thought: it is the first piece of evidence. But this evidence lures the individual from his solitude. It founds its first value on the whole human race. I rebel—therefore we exist.

Mais, en vérité, le changement était-il dans le climat ou dans les coeurs, voilà la question.

One grows out of pity when it's useless.

For many years I've been ashamed, mortally ashamed, of having been, even with the best intentions, even at many removes, a murderer in my turn. As time went on I merely learned that even those who were better than the rest could not keep themselves nowadays from killing or letting others kill, because such is the logic by which they live; and that we can't stir a finger in this world without the risk of bringing death to somebody.

Peut-être, répondit le docteur, mais vous savez, je me sens plus de solidarité avec les vaincus qu'avec les saints. Je n'ai pas de goût, je crois, pour l'héroïsme et la sainteté. Ce qui m'intéresse, c'est d'être un homme.

Tarrou had "lost the match," as he put it. But what had he, Rieux, won? No more than the experience of having known plague and remembering it, of having known friendship and remembering it, of knowing affection and being destined one day to remember it. So all a man could win in the conflict between plague and life was knowledge and memories. But Tarrou, perhaps, would have called that winning the match.

Quand une guerre éclate, les gens disent: «Ça ne durera pas, c'est trop bête.» Et sans doute une guerre est certainement trop bête, mais cela ne l'empêche pas de durer. La bêtise insiste toujours, on s'en apercevrait si l'on ne pensait pas toujours à soi.

But if that is what it meant to win the game, how hard it must be to live only with what one knows and what one remembers, and deprived of what one hopes. [...] There is no peace without hope [...] A warmth of life and an image of death: that was knowledge.

Even the sea had lost its deep blue colour and, beneath the misty sky, took on the sheen of silver or iron, making it painful to look at.

بی‌شک جنگ بسیار ابلهانه است، اما این نکته مانع ادامه یافتن آن نمی‌شود.

هناك طريقة يسيرة للتعرف على مدينة ما: هي أن نعرف كيف يشتغل فيها سكانها وكيف يحبون وكيف يموتون.

Love is never strong enough to find the words befitting it. Thus he and his mother would always love eachother silently.

Man is incapable of suffering for a long time, or being happy for a long time. Which means that he’s incapable of anything really worth while.

There have been many plagues in the world as there have been wars, yet plagues and wars always find people equally unprepared. [...] When a war breaks out people say: 'It won't last, it's too stupid.' And war is certainly too stupid, but that doesn't prevent it from lasting. Stupidity always carries doggedly on, as people wold notice if they were not always thinking about themselves. In this respect, the citizens of Oran were like the rest of the world, they thought about themselves, in other words, they were humanists: they did not believe in pestilence. A pestilence does not have human dimensions, so people tell themselves that it is unreal, that it is a bad dream which will end. But it does not always end and, from one bad dream to the next, it is people who end, humanists first of all because they have not prepared themselves.

We refuse to despair of mankind. Without having the unreasonable ambition to save men, we still want to serve them.

this precisely was the most disheartening thing: that the habit of despair is worse than despair itself.

They considered themselves free and no one will ever be free as long as there is plague, pestilence and famine

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. And all the hideous fears that stamp their faces in the daytime are transformed in the fiery, dusty nightfall into a sort of hectic exaltation, an unkempt freedom fevering in their blood.

The language he used was that of a man who was sick and tired of the world he lived in—though he had much liking for his fellow men—and had resolved, for his part, to have no truck with injustice and compromises with the truth.

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 that one must do what one can to cease being plague-stricken, and that's the only way in which we can hope for some peace or, failing that, a decent death. This, and only this, can bring relief to men and, if not save them, at least do them the least harm possible and even, sometimes, a little good.

ڕێیەکی سادە بۆ ناسینی شارێک ئەوەیە، کە بزانی خەڵکی ئەو شارە چۆن کار دەکەن، چۆن خۆشەویستی دەکەن و چۆن دەمرن

They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences.

At Oran, as elsewhere, for lack of time and thinking, people have to love one another without knowing much about it.

W ludziach więcej rzeczy zasługuje na podziw niż na pogardę.

One merely had the feeling that the disease had exhausted itself, or perhaps that it was retiring after achieving all of its objectives.

Can one be a saint without God? (...) - Heroism and sanctity don't really appeal to me . . . What interests me is - being a man.

Mais il vient toujours une heure dans l’histoire où celui qui ose dire que deux et deux font quatre est puni de mort. L’instituteur le sait bien. Et la question n’est pas de savoir quelle est la récompense ou la punition qui attend ce raisonnement. La question est de savoir si deux et deux, oui ou non, font quatre.

I grant we should add a third category: that of the true healers. But it is a fact one doesn't come across many of them, and anyhow it must be a hard vocation. That's why I decided to take, in every predicament, the victim's side, so as to reduce the damage done. Among them I can at least try to discover how on attains to the third category; in other words, to peace.

He was one of those rare people, rare in our town as elsewhere, who have the courage of their good feelings. What little he told of his personal life vouched for acts of kindness and a capacity for affection that no one in our times dares own to.

Estoy harto de la gente que muere por una idea. Yo no creo en el heroísmo; sé que eso es muy fácil, y he llegado a convencerme de que en el fondo es criminal. Lo que me interesa es que uno muera y viva por lo que ama.

إن البلية ليست في مقدور الإنسان، من أجل ذلك يقول المرء لنفسه إن البلية غير حقيقية، إنها حلم مزعج سيمر، ولكنه لا يمر دائماً ، ومن حلم مزعج إلى حلم مزعج يمر الناس بأنفسهم ، والإنسانييون بالدرجة الأولى لأنهم لم يتخذوا حيطتهم.

It was plague. We've had the plague here.' You'd almost think they expected to be given medals for it. But what does that mean--'plague'? Just life, no more than that.

The evil in the world comes almost always from ignorance,and goodwill can cause as much damage as ill-will if it is not enlightened.

I know. I’m sorry. But weariness is a kind of madness. And there are times when the only feeling I have is one of mad revolt.

ليس المهم أن تكون هذه الطريقة للمحاجّة صالحة، وإنما أن تدعو إلى التفكير

I asked what sort of 'trouble' we might expect. That he couldn't say; disasters always come out of the blue.

Indeed, the one thing these prophecies had in common was that, ultimately, all were reassuring. Unfortunately, though, the plague was not.

They knew now that if there is one thing that one can always desire and sometimes obtain, it is human affection.

the plague had taken away from all of them the power of love or even of friendship, for love demands some future, and for us there was only the here and now.

I’m not happy to go, but one needn’t be happy to make another start.

But, since the order of the world is shaped by death, mightn’t it be better for God if we refuse to believe in Him and struggle with all our might against death, without raising our eyes toward the heaven where He sits in silence?

So you haven't understood yet?" Rambert shrugged his shoulders almost scornfully. "Understood what?" "The plague." "Ah!" Rieux exclaimed. "No, you haven't understood that it means exactly that, the same thing over and over and over again.

I'm still of the same mind. For many years I've been ashamed, mortally ashamed, of having been, even with the best intentions, even at many removes, a murderer in my turn. As time went on, I merely learned that even those who were better than the rest could not keep themselves nowadays from killing or letting others kill, because such is the logic by which they live, and that we can't stir a finger in this world without the risk of bringing death to somebody. Yes, I've been ashamed ever since I have realized that we all have the 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 mortal enemy of anyone. I only know that one must do what one can to cease being plague stricken, and that's the only way in which we can hope for some peace or, failing that, a decent death.

Sometimes at midnight, in the great silence of the sleep bound town, the doctor turned on his radio before going to bed for the few hours' sleep he allowed himself. And from the ends of the earth, across thousands of miles of land and sea, kindly, well-meaning speakers tried to voice their fellow-feeling, and indeed did so, but at the same time proved the utter incapacity of every man truly to share in the suffering that he cannot see. "Oran! Oran!" In vain the call rang over oceans, in vain Rieux listened hopefully; always the tide of eloquence began to flow, bringing home still more the unbridgeable gulf that lay between Grand and the speaker. "Oran, we're with you!" they called emotionally. But not, the doctor told himself, to love or to die together-- and that's the only way...

Je dis seulement qu'il y a sur cette terre des fléaux et des victimes et qu'il faut, autant qu'il est possible, refuser d'êre avec le fléau. Cela vous paraîra peut-être un peu simple, et je ne sais si cela est simple, mais je sais que cela est vrai.

All he had gained was to have known the plague and to remember it, to have known friendship and to remember it, to have known affection and to have one day to remember it. All that a man could win in the game of plague and life was knowledge and memory.

A quatre heures du matin, on ne fait rien en général et l’on dort, même si la nuit a été une nuit de trahison. Oui, on dort à cette heure-là, et cela est rassurant puisque le grand désir d’un coeur inquiet est de posséder interminablement l’être qu’il aime ou de pouvoir plonger cet être, quand le temps de l’absence est venu, dans un sommeil sans rêves qui ne puisse prendre fin qu’au jour de la réunion.

What’s natural is the microbe. All the rest—health, integrity, purity (if you like)—is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never falter. The good man, the man who infects hardly anyone, is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention.

And when it comes down to it, you realize that no one is really capable of thinking of anyone else, even in the worst misfortune. Because thinking about someone really means thinking about that person minute by minute, not being distracted by anything – not housework, not a fly passing, not meals, not an urge to scratch oneself. But there are always flies and itches. This is why life is hard to live. And these people know that very well.

You think about bathing in the sea – thick as velvet, supple and smooth as a wild animal. You think about swimming naked, and at night, with the stars, and a friend. Swim till you’re far from the world, and breathing together in the same rhythm, and free of absolutely everything.

Some, often without knowing it, suffered from being deprived of the company of friends and from their inability to get in touch with them through the usual channels of friendship, letters, trains, and boats. Others, fewer these, Tarrou may have been one of them, had desired reunion with something they couldn't have defined, but which seemed to them the only desirable thing on earth. For want of a better name, they sometimes called it peace.

But the narrator is inclined to think that by attributing overimportance to praiseworthy actions one may, by implication, be paying indirect but potent homage to the worse side of human nature. For this attitude implies that such actions shine out as rare exceptions, while callousness and apathy are the general rule. The narrator does not share that view.

Week after week we were reduced to starting the same letter over again and copying out the same appeals, so that after a certain time words which had at first been torn bleeding from our hearts became void of sense. We copied them down mechanically, trying by means of these dead words to give some idea of our ordeal. And in the end, the conventional call of a telegram seemed to us preferable to this sterile, obstinate monologue and this arid conversation with a blank wall.

There's so much wickedness in the world," she said. "So what can you expect?

Il n’y avait plus alors de destins individuels, mais une histoire collective qui était la peste et des sentiments partagés par tous.

They were assured, of course, of the inerrable equality of death, but nobody wanted that kind of equality.

For nothing in the world is it worth turning one's back on what one loves. Yet that is what I'm doing —though why I do not know.

But memory is less disposed to compromise

Il choisirait de tout croire pour ne pas être réduit à tout nier.

So all a man could win in the conflict between plague and life was knowledge and memories. But Tarrou, perhaps, would have called that winning the match.

So all a man could win in the conflict between plague and life was knowledge and memories.

Las plagas, en efecto, son una cosa común pero es difícil creer en las plagas cuando las ve uno caer sobre su cabeza.

C'est que les rats meurent dans la rue et les hommes dans leur chambre. Et les journaux ne s'occupent que de la rue.

Une manière commode de faire la connaissance d'une ville est de chercher comment on y travaille, comment on y aime et comment on y meurt.

Still when abstraction sets to killing you, you've got to get busy with it.

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.

though a war may well be "too stupid," that doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way...

Nada en el mundo merece que se aparte uno de los que ama. Y sin embargo, yo también me aparto sin saber por qué.

It comes to this: like all of us who have not yet died of plague he fully realizes that his freedom and his life may be snatched from him at any moment.

Evening was coming on, but the town, once so noisy at this hour, was strangely still.

Moreover, in this extremity of solitude none could count on any help from his neighbor; each had to bear the load of his troubles alone.

that the habit of despair was worse than despair itself.

Rieux knew what the old man was thinking at that moment as he wept, and he thought the same: that this world without love was like a dead world and that there always comes a time when one grows tired of prisons, work and courage, and years for the face of another human being and the wondering, affectionate heart.

He knew what those jubilant crowds did not know but could have learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.

The only picture of Tarrou he would always have would be the picture of a man who firmly gripped the steering-wheel of his car when driving, or else the picture of that stalwart body, now lying motionless. Knowing meant that: a living warmth, and a picture of death.

Sin duda, nada es más natural hoy día que ver a las gentes trabajar de la mañana a la noche y en seguida elegir, entre el café, el juego y la charla, el modo de perder el tiempo que les queda por vivir.

Nonetheless, he knew that the tale he had to tell could not be one of a final victory. It could be only the record of what had had to be done, and what assuredly would have to be done again in the never ending fight against terror and its relentless onslaughts, despite their personal afflictions, by all who, while unable to be saints but refusing to bow down to pestilences, strive their utmost to be healers.

The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point, but 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.

And it was in the midst of shouts rolling against the terrace wall in massive waves that waxed in volume and duration, while cataracts of colored fire fell thicker through the darkness, that Dr. Rieux resolved to compile this chronicle, so that he should not be one of those who hold their peace but should bear witness in favor of those plague-stricken people; so that some memorial of the injustice and outrage done them might endure; and to state quite simply what we learn in time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise.

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.

One of the cafés had that brilliant idea of putting up a slogan: 'the best protection against infection is a good bottle of wine', which confirmed an already prevalent opinion that alcohol is a safeguard against infectious disease. Every night, towards 2 a.m., quite a number of drunk men, ejected from the cafés , staggered down the streets, vociferating optimism.

the evil that is in this world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that however isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue;

Indeed the Here and Now had come to mean everything to them. For there is no denying that the plague had gradually killed off in all of us the faculty not of love only but eve of friendship. Naturally enough, since love asks something of the future, and nothing was left but a series of present moments.

One of the cafés had the brilliant idea of putting up a slogan: “The best protection against infection is a bottle of good wine,” which confirmed an already prevalent opinion that alcohol is a safeguard against infectious disease.

Lo que es preciso subrayar es el aspecto frívolo de la población y de la vida. Pero se pasan los días fácilmente en cuanto se adquieren hábitos, y puesto que nuestra ciudad favorece justamente los hábitos, puede decirse que todo va bien.

Las plagas, en efecto, son una cosa común pero es difícil creer en las plagas cuando las ve uno caer sobre su cabeza. Ha habido en el mundo tantas pestes como guerras y sin embargo, pestes y guerras cogen a las gentes siempre desprevenidas.

And when one day Rambert told him that he liked waking up at four in the morning and thinking of his beloved Paris, the doctor guessed easily enough, basing this on his own experience, that that was his favorite time for conjuring up pictures of the woman from whom he now was parted. This was, indeed, the hour when he could feel surest she was wholly his. Till four in the morning one is seldom doing anything and at that hour, even if the night has been a night of betrayal, one is asleep. Yes, everyone sleeps at that hour, and this is reassuring, since the great longing of an unquiet heart is to possess constantly and consciously the loved one, or, failing that, to be able to plunge the loved one, when a time of absence intervenes, into a dreamless sleep timed to last unbroken until the day they meet again.

Recite, Taru, da li ste sposobni da žrtvujete život za ljubav? – Ne znam, ali mi se čini da nisam, sada. – Eto. A sposobni ste da umrete za ideju, to se vidi na prvi pogled. A ja sam, vidite, sit ljudi koji umiru za ideju. Ne verujem u herojstvo, znam da je ono laka stvar i naučio sam da je ubilačko. Mene zanima da čovek živi i umre za ono što voli.

The trouble is, there is nothing less spectacular than a pestilence and, if only because they last so long, great misfortunes are monotonous. In the memory of those who have lived through them, the dreadful days of the plague do not seem like vast flames, cruel and magnificent, but rather like an endless trampling that flattened everything in its path.

Pregunta: ¿qué hacer para no perder el tiempo? Respuesta: sentirlo en toda su lentitud. Medios: pasarse los días en la antesala de un dentista en una silla inconfortable; vivir el domingo en el balcón, por la tarde; oír conferencias en una lengua que no se conoce; escoger los itinerarios del tren más largos y menos cómodos y viajar de pie, naturalmente; hacer la cola en las taquillas de los espectáculos, sin perder su puesto, etc., etc...

A mi edad es uno sincero forzosamente. Mentir cansa mucho. (Tarrou a Rambert)

El cansancio es una especie de locura. Y hay horas en esta ciudad en las que no siento más que rebeldía. (Rieux a Paneloux)

hay en los hombres más cosas dignas de admiración que de desprecio.

The truth is that nothing is less sensational than pestilence, and by reason of their very duration great misfortunes are monotonous. In

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.

No rīta viņi atkal atgriezās postā, tas ir, rutīnā.

Man isn't an idea, Rambert

The furious revolt of the first weeks had given place to a vast despondency, not to be taken for resignation, though it was no the less a sort of passive and provisional acquiescence.

Then, already, it had brought to his mind the silence brooding over beds in which he had let men die. There as here it was the same solemn pause, the lull that follows battle; it was the silence of defeat. But the silence now enveloping his dead friend, so dense, so much akin to the nocturnal silence of the streets and of the town set free at last, made Rieux cruelly aware that this defeat was final, the last disastrous battle that ends a war and makes peace itself an ill beyond all remedy. The doctor could not tell if Tarrou had found peace, now that all was over, but for himself he had a feeling that no peace was possible to him henceforth, any more than there can an armistice for a mother bereaved of a son or for a man who buries his friend.

The rest of the story, to Grand's thinking, was very simple. The common lot of married couples. You get married, you go on loving a bit longer, you work. And you work so hard that it makes you forget to love. As the head of the office where Grand was employed hadn't kept his promise, Jeanne, too, had to work outside. At this point a little imagination was needed to grasp what Grand was trying to convey. Owing largely to fatigue, he gradually lost grip of himself, had less and less to say, and failed to keep alive the feeling in his wife that she was loved. An overworked husband, poverty, the gradual loss of hope in a better future, silent evenings at home, what chance had any passion of surviving such conditions? Probably Jeanne had suffered. And yet she'd stayed; of course one may often suffer a long time without knowing it. Thus years went by. Then, one day, she left him. Naturally she hadn't gone alone. "I was very fond of you, but now I'm so tired. I'm not happy to go, but one needn't be happy to make another start." That, more or less, was what she'd said in her letter. Grand, too, had suffered. And he, too, might, as Rieux pointed out, have made a fresh start. But no, he had lost faith. Only, he couldn't stop thinking about her. What he'd have liked to do was to write her a letter justifying himself. "But it's not easy," he told Rieux. "I've been thinking it over for years. While we loved each other we didn't need words to make ourselves understood. But people don't love forever. A time came when I should have found the words to keep her with me, only I couldn't.

I know positively - yes Rieux I can say I know the world inside out as no one on earth is free from it. And I know too that we must keep endless watch on ourselves lest in careless moment we breathe in somebody's face and fasten the infection on him. What's natural is the microbe. All the rest- health integrity purity if you like - is a product of the human will of vigilance that must never falter. The good man the man who infects hardly anyone is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention. And it needs tremendous will-power a never ending tension of the mind to avoid such lapses. Yes Rieux it's a wearying business being plague-stricken. But it's still more wearying to refuse to be it. That's why everybody in the world today looks so tired everyone is more or less sick of plague. But that is also why some of us who want to get the plague out of their systems feel such desperate weariness a weariness from which nothing remains to set us free except death.

el gran deseo de un corazón inquieto es el de poseer interminablemente al ser que ama o hundir a este ser, cuando llega el momento de la ausencia, en un sueño sin orillas que sólo pueda terminar el día del encuentro.

His face still in shadow, Rieux said that he'd already answered: that if he believed in an all-powerful God he would cease curing the sick and leave that to Him. But no one in the world believed in a God of that sort; no, not even Paneloux, who believed that he believed in such a God. And this was proved by the fact that no one ever threw himself on Providence completely. Anyhow, in this respect Rieux believed himself to be on the right road – in fighting against creation as he found it.

Thus and thus only the Christian could face the problem squarely and, scorning subterfuge, pierce to the heart of the supreme issues, the essential choice. And his choice would be to believe everything, so as not be forced into denying everything.

But we do not congratulate a schoolmaster on teaching that two and two make four, though we may, perhaps, congratulate him on having chosen his laudable vocation...But again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. The schoolmaster is well aware of this. And the question is not one of knowing what punishment or reward attends the making of this calculation. The question is that of knowing whether two and two do make four.

In any case, if the reader would have a correct idea of the mood of these exiles, we must conjure up once more those dreary evenings, sifting down through a haze of dust and golden light upon the treeless streets filled with teeming crowds of men and women. For, characteristically, the sound that rose towards the terraces still bathed in the last glow of daylight, now that the noises of vehicles and motors--the sole voice of cities in ordinary times--had ceased, was but one vast rumour of low voices and incessant footfalls, the drumming of innumerable soles timed to the eerie whistling of the plague in the sultry air above, the sound of a huge concourse of people marking time, a never-ending, stifling drone that, gradually swelling, filled the town from end to end, and evening after evening gave its truest, mournfullest expression to the blind endurance which had ousted love from all our hearts.

On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But 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 which 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.

And those they love have forgotten them because all their energies are devoted to making schemes and taking steps to get them out of the camp. And by dint of always thinking about these schemes and steps they have ceased thinking about those whose release they’re trying to secure. And that, too, is natural enough. In fact, it comes to this: nobody is capable of really thinking about anyone, even in the worst calamity. For really to think about someone means thinking about that person every minute of the day, without letting one’s thoughts be diverted by anything - by meals, by a fly that settles on one’s cheek, by household duties, or by a sudden itch somewhere. But there are always flies and itches. That’s why life is difficult to live.

Next day Tarrou set to work and enrolled a first team of workers, soon to be followed by many others. However, it is not the narrator's intention to ascribe to these sanitary groups more importance than their due. Doubtless today many of our fellow citizens are apt to yield to the temptation of exaggerating the services they rendered. But the narrator is inclined to think that by attributing overimportance to praiseworthy actions one may, by implication, be paying indirect but potent homage to the worse side of human nature. For this attitude implies that such actions shine out as rare exceptions, while callousness and apathy are the general rule. The narrator does not share that view. The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But 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 town was peopled with sleepwalkers, whose trance was broken only on the rare occasions when at night their wounds, to all appearance closed, suddenly reopened. Then, waking with a start, they would run their fingers over the wounds with a sort of absentminded curiosity, twisting their lips, and in a flash their grief blazed up again, and abruptly there rose before them the mournful visage of their love. In the morning they harked back to normal conditions, in other words, the plague.

Query: How contrive not to waste one’s time? Answer: By being fully aware of it all the while. Ways in which this can be done: By spending one’s days on an uneasy chair in a dentist’s waiting-room; by remaining on one’s balcony all a Sunday afternoon; by listening to lectures in a language one doesn’t know; by traveling by the longest and least-convenient train routes, and of course standing all the way; by lining up at the box-office of theaters and then not buying a seat; and so forth.

Query: How contrive not to waste one’s time? Answer: By being fully aware of it all the while. Ways in which this can be done: By spending one’s days on an uneasy chair in a dentist’s waiting-room; by remaining on one’s balcony all of a Sunday afternoon; by listening to lectures in a language one doesn’t know; by traveling by the longest and least-convenient train routes, and of course standing all the way; by lining up at the box-office of theaters and then not buying a seat; and so forth.

Even the small satisfaction of writing letters was denied us. It came to this: not only had the town ceased to be in touch with the rest of the world by normal means of communication, but also—according to a second notification—all correspondence was forbidden, to obviate the risk of letters’ carrying infection outside the town.

Προσπαθούσε να συγκεντρώσει στο μυαλό του όσα γνώριζε γι'αυτή την αρρώστια. Αριθμοί τριγύριζαν στη μνήμη του και σκεφτόταν ότι οι τριάντα περίπου μεγάλες επιδημίες πανούκλας που γνώρισε η ιστορία είχαν στοιχίσει στο ανθρώπινο γένος γύρω στα εκατό εκατομμύρια νεκρούς. Αλλά τι είναι εκατό εκατομμύρια νεκροί; Όταν έχεις πολεμήσει, είναι ζήτημα αν ξέρεις τι σημαίνει ένας νεκρός. Κι αφού ένας νεκρός δεν σημαίνει τίποτα αν δεν τον έχεις δει με τα μάτια σου, εκατό εκατομμύρια πτώματα σπαρμένα στο διάβα της ιστορίας δεν είναι παρά καπνός στα μάτια της φαντασίας.

Răul care este în lume vine aproape întotdeauna din ignoranţă, şi bunele intenţii, dacă nu sunt luminate de conştiinţă, pot să facă tot atâtea stricăciuni ca şi răutatea. Oamenii sunt mai curând buni decât răi, şi, în realitate, nu asta e problema. Ei sunt însă mai mult sau mai puţin neştiutori şi asta e ceea ce se cheamă virtute sau viciu, viciul cel mai fără de speranţă fiind cel al ignoranţei care crede că ştie tot şi îşi permite atunci să omoare. Sufletul ucigaşului este orb şi nu există bunătate adevărată, nici iubire frumoasă fără toată clarviziunea posibilă.

Mais le narrateur est plutôt tenté de croire qu’en donnant trop d’importance aux belles actions, on rend finalement un hommage indirect et puissant au mal. Car on laisse supposer alors que ces belles actions n’ont tant de prix que parce qu’elles sont rares et que la méchanceté et l’indifférence sont des moteurs bien plus fréquents dans les actions des hommes. C’est là une idée que le narrateur ne partage pas. Le mal qui est dans le monde vient presque toujours de l’ignorance, et la bonne volonté peut faire autant de dégâts que la méchanceté, si elle n’est pas éclairée. Les hommes sont plutôt bons que mauvais, et en vérité ce n’est pas la question. Mais ils ignorent plus ou moins, et c’est ce qu’on appelle vertu ou vice, le vice le plus désespérant étant celui de l’ignorance qui croit tout savoir et qui s'autorise alors a tuer. L'âme du meurtrier est aveugle et il n’y a pas de vraie bonté ni de belle amour sans toute la clairvoyance possible.

For the plague-stricken their peace of mind is more important than a human life. Decent folks must be allowed to sleep easy o' nights, mustn't they? Really it would be in shockingly bad taste to linger on such details, that's common knowledge. But personally I've never been able to sleep well since then. The bad taste remained in my mouth and I've kept lingering on the details, brooding over them.

Profiteers were taking a hand and purveying at enormous prices essential foodstuffs not available in the shops. The result was that poor families were in great straits, while the rich went short of practically nothing. Thus, whereas plague by its impartial ministrations should have promoted equality among our townsfolk, it now had the opposite effect and, thanks to the habitual conflict of cupidities, exacerbated the sense of injustice rankling in men’s hearts. They were assured, of course, of the inerrable equality of death, but nobody wanted that kind of equality.

Et sans doute une guerre est certainement trop bête, mais cela ne l’empêche pas de durer. La bêtise insiste toujours, on s’en apercevrait si l’on ne pensait pas toujours à soi. Nos concitoyens à cet égard étaient comme tout le monde, ils pensaient à eux-mêmes, autrement dit ils étaient humanistes : ils ne croyaient pas aux fléaux. Le fléau n’est pas à la mesure de l’homme, on se dit donc que le fléau est irréel, c’est un mauvais rêve qui va passer. Mais il ne passe pas toujours et, de mauvais rêve en mauvais rêve, ce sont les hommes qui passent, et les humanistes en premier lieu, parce qu’ils n’ont pas pris leurs précautions.

Ils niaient tranquillement, contre toute évidence, que nous ayons jamais connu ce monde insensé où le meurtre d’un homme était aussi quotidien que celui des mouches, cette sauvagerie bien définie, ce délire calculé, cet emprisonnement qui apportait avec lui une affreuse liberté à l’égard de tout ce qui n’était pas le présent, cette odeur de mort qui stupéfiait tous ceux qu’elle ne tuait pas, ils niaient enfin que nous ayons été ce peuple abasourdi dont tous les jours une par- tie, entassée dans la gueule d’un four, s’évaporait en fumées grasses, pendant que l’autre, chargée des chaînes de l’impuissance et de la peur, attendait son tour.

La nuit qui suivit ne fut pas celle de la lutte, mais celle du silence. Dans cette chambre retranchée du monde, au-dessus de ce corps mort maintenant habillé, Rieux sentit planer le calme surprenant qui, bien des nuits auparavant, sur les terrasses au-dessus de la peste, avait suivi l'attaque des portes. Déjà, à cette époque, il avait pensé à ce silence qui s'élevait des lits où il avait laissé mourir des hommes. C'était partout la même pause, le même intervalle solennel, toujours le même apaisement qui suivait les combats, c'était le silence de la défaite. Mais pour celui qui enveloppait maintenant son ami, il était si compact, il s'accordait si étroitement au silence des rues et de la ville libérée de la peste, que Rieux sentait bien qu'il s'agissait cette fois de la défaite définitive, celle qui termine les guerres et fait de la paix elle-même une souffrance sans guérison. Le docteur ne savait pas si, pour finir, Tarrou avait retrouvé la paix, mais, dans ce moment tout au moins, il croyait savoir qu'il n'y aurait jamais plus de paix possible pour lui-même, pas plus qu'il n'y a d'armistice pour la mère amputée de son fils ou pour l'homme qui ensevelit son ami.

Quando estoura uma guerra, as pessoas dizem: ”Não vai durar muito, seria idiota”. E sem dúvida uma guerra é uma tolice, o que não a impede de durar. A tolice insiste sempre, e compreendê-la-íamos se não pensássemos sempre em nós. Nossos concidadãos, a esse respeito, eram como todo mundo: pensavam em si próprios. Em outras palavras, eram humanistas: não acreditavam nos flagelos. O flagelo não está à altura do homem; diz-se então que o flagelo é irreal, que é um sonho mau que vai passar. Mas nem sempre ele passa e, de sonho mau em sonho mau, são os homens que passam, e os humanistas em primeiro lugar, pois não tomaram suas precauções. Nossos concidadãos não eram mais culpados que os outros. Apenas se esqueciam de ser modestos e pensavam que tudo ainda era possível para eles, o que pressupunha que os flagelos eram impossíveis. Continuavam a fazer negócios, preparavam viagens e tinham opiniões. Como poderiam ter pensado na peste, que suprime o futuro, os deslocamentos e as discussões? Julgavam-se livres, e nunca alguém será livre enquanto houver flagelos.

Avec le temps, j'ai simplement aperçu que même ceux qui étaient meilleurs que d'autres ne pouvaient s'empêcher aujourd'hui de tuer ou de laisser tuer parce que c'était dans la logique où ils vivaient, et que nous ne pouvions pas faire un geste en ce monde sans risquer de faire mourir. Oui, j'ai continué d'avoir honte, j'ai appris cela, que nous étions tous dans la peste, et j'ai perdu la paix. Je la cherche encore aujourd'hui, essayant de les comprendre tous et de n'être l'ennemi mortel de personne. Je sais seulement qu'il faut faire ce qu'il faut pour ne plus être un pestiféré et que c'est là ce qui peut, seul, nous faire espérer la paix, ou une bonne mort à son défaut. C'est cela qui peut soulager les hommes et, sinon les sauver, du moins leur faire le moins de mal possible et même parfois un peu de bien. Et c'est pourquoi j'ai décidé de refuser tout ce qui, de près ou de loin, pour de bonnes ou de mauvaises raisons, fait mourir ou justifie qu'on fasse mourir. « C'est pourquoi encore cette épidémie ne m'apprend rien, sinon qu'il faut la combattre à vos côtés. Je sais de science certaine (oui, Rieux, je sais tout de la vie, vous le voyez bien) que chacun la porte en soi, la peste, parce que personne, non, personne au monde n'en est indemne. Et qu'il faut se surveiller sans arrêt pour ne pas être amené, dans une minute de distraction, à respirer dans la figure d'un autre et à lui coller l'infection. Ce qui est naturel, c'est le microbe. Le reste, la santé, l'intégrité, la pureté, si vous voulez, c'est un effet de la volonté et d'une volonté qui ne doit jamais s'arrêter.