...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 wrong enough to find the word befitting it.

He kept the middle way, that's all: he was the type of man for whom one has an affection of the mild but steady order - which is the kind that wears best.

'At my age one's got to be sincere. Lying's too much effort.'

'I'm glad to know he's [Paneloux] better than his sermon.'

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...

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.

Can one be a saint without God?, that's the problem, in fact the only problem, I'm up against today.

In Oran, as elsewhere, for want of time and thought, people have to love one another without knowing it.

Yes, there was an element of abstraction and unreality in misfortune. But when an abstraction starts to kill you, you have to get to work on it.