“He knew what those jubilant crowds did not know but could have learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.”

Albert Camus

1913-1960

“The Plague” (“Le Peste”)

Albert Camus was a French novelist who published “Le Peste” (The Plague) in 1947, an allegorical account of the fight against an epidemic set in the French Algerian town of Oran. The book deserves a first or re-read today.

(source: “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations”)