La clairvoyance “clear vision” is Camus’ word for lucidity

“On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn’t the real point. 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. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness.” (sans toute la clairvoyance possible) ~ Albert Camus from one of the more memorable passages of The Plague, in which he addresses the volunteer sanitary groups put together by citizens to clean the town’s overloaded hospitals.

The masks we wear, inside and out

I started writing something about the masks we wear and this quotation from James Baldwin popped up in my email today:

“Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” ~ James Baldwin