albert camus

"And from the ends of the earth, across thousands of miles of land and sea, kindly, well meaning speakers tried to voice their fellow-feeling, and indeed did so, but at the same time proved the utter incapacity of every man truly to share in suffering that he cannot see"

""In fact, like our fellow citizens, Rieux was caught off his guard, and we should understand his hesitations in the light of the this fact; and similarily understand how he was torn between conflicting fears and confidence. When a war breaks out, people say: "It's too stupid, it can't last long." But though a war may well be "too stupid, " that doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting in its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.
In this respect our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences. A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy for the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away and the humanists are the first of all, because they haven't taken thier precautions. Our townsfolk were not more to blame than others; they forgot to be modest, that was all, and thought that everything still was possible for them; which presupposed that pestilences were impossible. They went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and formed views. How should they have given a thought to anything like plague, which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views. They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free as long as their are pestilences."