...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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