The Plague

by Albert Camus

the moment I rejected killing, I condemned myself to a definitive exile.

All I 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.

I have heard so many arguments which nearly turned my head, and which turned enough other heads for them to consent to murder,

there are pestilences and victims, and nothing more.

‘Of course, there should be a third category, that of true healers, but it’s a fact that one does not meet many of those, because it must be hard to achieve.

Among them, I can at least seek how one arrives at the third category, that is to say at peace.’

the road that one should follow to arrive at peace. ‘Yes, sympathy.’

Can one be a saint without God: that is the only concrete question that I know today.’

course a man should fight for the victims. But if he ceases to love anything else, then what is the point in fighting?’

Once they had dressed again they left without saying a word. But their hearts were one, and the memory of that night was sweet for both of them.

the longer you wait, the longer you are able to wait,

I seem calm most of the time. But it has always been an enormous effort even to be normal.

‘On a fine morning in the month of May, an elegant woman was riding a magnificent sorrel mare, amid the flowers, down the avenues of the Bois de Boulogne.’

Against all evidence they calmly denied that we had ever known this senseless world in which the murder of a man was a happening as banal as the death of a fly,

This chronicle is drawing to a close. It is time for Dr Bernard Rieux to admit that he is its author. But