Dante Alighieri
Why art thou silent and invisible
Father of jealousy
Why does thou hide thyself in clouds
From every searching eye
Why darkness and obscurity in all thy words and laws
That none dare eat the fruit but from thy wily serpents jaws
Or is it because secrecy gains females loud applause?
William Blake
...And, indeed, as he listened to the cries of joy rising from the town, Rieux remembered that such joy is always imperiled. He knew what these jubilant crowds did not know but could have learned by 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 bookselves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.
Albert Camus, "The Plague"