“In love, happiness is an abnormal state.”
[Le bonheur] est, dans l'amour, un état anormal.
In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol II: Within a Budding Grove (1919)
After being asked "What does it take to be normal again, after having your humanity stripped away by the Nazis?" in an interview in O : The Oprah Magazine (November 2000)
“An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.”
Source: Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984), p. 32 in the 1992 edition, ISBN 0807014265, Beacon Press
Source: The Pillars of the Earth
Source: The Inefficient Stock Market - What Pays Off And Why (1999), Chapter 11, The Negative Payoff to Risk, p. 113
319 U.S. 641-42
Judicial opinions, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943)
Context: The case is made difficult not because the principles of its decision are obscure but because the flag involved is our own. Nevertheless, we apply the limitations of the Constitution with no fear that freedom to be intellectually and spiritually diverse or even contrary will disintegrate the social organization. To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds. We can have intellectual individualism and the rich cultural diversities that we owe to exceptional minds only at the price of occasional eccentricity and abnormal attitudes. When they are so harmless to others or to the State as those we deal with here, the price is not too great. But freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.
