The
plague
...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 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
... 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.
... there could be no true goodness nor true love
without the utmost clear-sightedness.
…Paneloux
[the local priest, MDA] is a man of learning, a scholar.
He hasn’t come in contact with death; that’s why he can speak with such
assurance of the truth—with a capital T.
But every country priest who visits his parishioners and has heard a man
gasping for breath on his deathbed thinks as I do.
He’d try to relieve human suffering before trying to point out its
excellence.
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