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.

Albert Camus, The Plague

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.

Albert Camus, The Plague

A strange happiness possessed him. Turning to Tarrou, he caught a glimpse on his friend’s face of the same happiness, a happiness that forgot nothing, not even murder.

Albert Camus, The Plague

Albert Camus, The Plague

Tarrou: All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it’s up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences. That may sound simple to the point of childishness; I can’t judge if it’s simple, but I know it’s true. You see, I’d heard such quantities of arguments, which very nearly turned my head, and turned other people’s heads enough to make them approve of murder; and I’d come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clean-cut language. So I resolved always to speak, and to act, quite clearly, as this was the only way of setting myself on the right track. That’s why I say there are pestilences and there are victims; no more than that. If, by making that statement, I, too, become a carrier of the plague-germ, at least I don’t do it willfully. I try, in short, to be an innocent murderer. You see, I’ve no great ambitions. I grant we should add a third category: that of the true healers. But it’s 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 victims’ side, so as to reduce the damage done. Among them I can at least try to discover how one attains to the third category; in other words, to peace.
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.
Tarrou: Yes, the path of sympathy. It comes to this. What interests me is learning how to become a saint.
Rieux: But you don’t believe in God.
Tarrou: Exactly! Can one be a saint without God? That’s the problem, in fact the only problem, I’m up against today.
Rieux: 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.
Tarrou: Yes, we’re both after the same thing, but I’m less ambitious.
Tarrou: Do you know what we now should do for friendship’s sake?
Rieux: Anything you like, Tarrou.
Tarrou: Go for a swim. It’s one of these harmless pleasures that even a saint-to-be can indulge in, don’t you agree? Really, it’s too damn silly living only in and for the plague. Of course, a man should fight for the victims, but if he ceases caring for anything outside that, what’s the use of his fighting?

Albert Camus, The Plague

They’re all mad over murder and they couldn’t stop killing men even if they wanted to.

Albert Camus, The Plague

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.

Albert Camus, The Plague

“When an innocent youth can have his eyes destroyed, a Christian should either lose his faith or consent to having his eyes destroyed.

Albert Camus, The Plague

No, we should go forward, groping our way through the darkness, stumbling perhaps at times, and try to do what good lay in our power.

Albert Camus, The Plague

It was in a cold, silent church, surrounded by a congregation of men exclusively, that Rieux watched the Father climb into the pulpit. He spoke in a gentler, more thoughtful tone than on the previous occasion, and several times was noticed to be stumbling over his words. A yet more noteworthy change was that instead of saying “you” he now said “we.”

Albert Camus, The Plague

Albert Camus, The Plague

Rieux was already on his way out, walking so quickly and with such a strange look on his face that Paneloux put out an arm to check him when he was about to pass him in the doorway. “Come, doctor,” he began.

Rieux swung round on him fiercely. “Ah! That child, anyhow, was innocent, and you know it as well as I do!” He strode on, brushing past Paneloux, and walked across the school playground.

Sitting on a wooden bench under the dingy, stunted trees, he wiped off the sweat that was beginning to run into his eyes. He felt like shouting imprecations, anything to loosen the stranglehold lashing his heart with steel. Heat was flooding down between the branches of the fig trees. A white haze, spreading rapidly over the blue of the morning sky, made the air yet more stifling. Rieux lay back wearily on the bench. Gazing up at the ragged branches, the shimmering sky, he slowly got back his breath and fought down his fatigue.

He heard a voice behind him. “Why was there that anger in your voice just now? What we’d been seeing was as unbearable to me as it was to you.”

Rieux turned toward Paneloux. “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.”

“I understand,” Paneloux said in a low voice. “That sort of thing is revolting because it passes our human understanding. But perhaps we should love what we cannot understand.”

Rieux straightened up slowly. He gazed at Paneloux, summoning to his gaze all the strength and fervor he could muster against his weariness. Then he shook his head. “No, Father. I’ve a very different idea of love. And until my dying day I shall refuse to love a scheme of things in which children are put to torture.”

A shade of disquietude crossed the priest’s face. “Ah, doctor,” he said sadly, “I’ve just realized what is meant by ‘grace.’”

Rieux had sunk back again on the bench. His lassitude had returned and from its depths he spoke, more gently: “It’s something I haven’t got; that I know. But I’d rather not discuss that with you. We’re working side by side for something that unites us, beyond blasphemy and prayers. And it’s the only thing that matters.”

Paneloux sat down beside Rieux. It was obvious that he was deeply moved. “Yes, yes,” he said, “you, too, are working for man’s salvation.”

Rieux tried to smile. “Salvation’s much too big a word for me. I don’t aim so high. I’m concerned with man’s health; and for me his health comes first.”

Paneloux seemed to hesitate. “Doctor?” he began, then fell silent. Down his face, too, sweat was trickling. Murmuring: “Good-by for the present,” he rose. His eyes were moist.

When he turned to go, Rieux, who had seemed lost in thought, suddenly rose and took a step toward him. “Again, please forgive me. I can promise there won’t be another outburst of that kind.”

Paneloux held out his hand, saying regretfully: “And yet, I haven’t convinced you!”

“What does it matter? What I hate is death and disease, as you well know. And whether you wish it or not, we’re allies, facing them and fighting them together.” Rieux was still holding Paneloux’s hand. “So you see”, but he refrained from meeting the priest’s eyes, “God Himself can’t part us.”

Now and then Rieux took his pulse, less because this served any purpose than as an escape from his utter helplessness, and when he closed his eyes, he seemed to feel its tumult mingling with the fever of his own blood. And then, at one with the tortured child, he struggled to sustain him with all the remaining strength of his own body. But, linked for a few moments, the rhythms of their heartbeats soon fell apart, the child escaped him, and again he knew his impotence.

Albert Camus, The Plague

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.”

Albert Camus, The Plague

Yes, it was quite true that men can’t do without their fellow men; that he was as helpless as these unhappy people and he, too, deserved the same faint thrill of pity that he allowed himself once he had left them.

Albert Camus, The Plague

It was by such lapses that Rieux could gauge his exhaustion. His sensibility was getting out of hand. Kept under all the time, it had grown hard and brittle and seemed to snap completely now and then, leaving him the prey of his emotions. No resource was left him but to tighten the stranglehold on his feelings and harden his heart protectively. For he knew this was the only way of carrying on.

Albert Camus, The Plague

And by the end of their long sundering they had also lost the power of imagining the intimacy that once was theirs or understanding what it can be to live with someone whose life is wrapped up in yours.

Albert Camus, The Plague