in Ode to a reader

by Camus
excerpt from The Plague that struck a chord:)

"...None of us was capable any longer of an exalted emotion; all had trite monotonous feelings. "It's high time it stopped," people would say, because in time of calamity the obvious thing is to desire its end. But when making such remarks, we felt none of the passionate yearning or fierce resentment of the early phase; we merely voiced one of the few clear ideas that lingered in the twilight of our minds. The furious revolt of the first weeks had given place to a vast despondency, not to be taken for resignation, though it was none the less a sort of passive and provisional acquiescence.

"Our fellow citizens had fallen into line, adapted themselves, as people say, to the situation, because there was no way of doing otherwise. Naturally they retained the attitudes of sadness and suffering, but they had ceased to feel their sting. Indeed, to some, Dr, Rieux among them, this precisely was the most disheartening thing: that the habit of despair is worse than despair itself."

-The Plague