Quotation
Last reviewed:
“There are more things to admire in people than to despise.”
Albert Camus · Absurdism · Modern · 1947
What does it mean?
There are more things to admire in people than to despise. The Plague ends, after rats and quarantine and the death of a child, with a narrator who thinks the chronicle should say that. A rival reading hears a soft humanism that denies the harm the novel has just shown. He has shown the harm. The sentence is a judgement about what, even so, is there to be recorded: ordinary decency, stubbornness, the work of tending. Another reading takes it as a fact about human nature, optimistically statistical.
Did Albert Camus really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. The sense of the closing of The Plague in Stuart Gilbert's English. His wording is often 'there are more things to admire in men than to despise'. The card says 'people'. Treat the noun as a modest modernisation and check the edition before a verbatim claim.
Where it comes from
The Plague, end, in Stuart Gilbert's translation
Approximate date: 1947.
How to use it
After a bad year in a care home in Sunderland, a manager writes the report only as failure. The closing of the novel is a different editorial choice, made with the failures in view. It does not require the report to lie about the failures. It requires the report not to call the contempt the whole of the evidence. Admiration, here, is for particular conduct. It is not a brand.
A mindset reading
Gilbert's translation is the classic English of the novel. If your edition says 'men', do not 'correct' it in a quotation without saying so. The judgement is stable across that noun. The accuracy of the noun is still the habit.
Understand the philosophy
The Plague, 1947, is a chronicle and an allegory that Camus did not want reduced to one key. The last pages belong to Rieux. They are not The Myth of Sisyphus. They are what he wrote after the war had given the absurd a city.
- ethics
- society
- virtue
FAQ
What does it mean?
There are more things to admire in people than to despise. The Plague ends, after rats and quarantine and the death of a child, with a narrator who thinks the chronicle should say that. A rival reading hears a soft humanism that denies the harm the novel has just shown. He has shown the harm. The sentence is a judgement about what, even so, is there to be recorded: ordinary decency, stubbornness, the work of tending. Another reading takes it as a fact about human nature, optimistically statistical.
Did Albert Camus really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. The sense of the closing of The Plague in Stuart Gilbert's English. His wording is often 'there are more things to admire in men than to despise'. The card says 'people'. Treat the noun as a modest modernisation and check the edition before a verbatim claim.
Which work is it in?
The Plague, end, in Stuart Gilbert's translation Approximate date: 1947.