“Very sensible indeed!” Settembrini put in. “My word! So if I stopped at that, you would be satisfied?”

“Or if you said that illness may serve as a pretext for depravity⁠—that would be all right, too.”

“ Grazie tanto! ”

“But illness a form of depravity? That is to say, not originating in depravity, but itself depravity? That seems to me a paradox.”

“I beg of you, Engineer, not to impute to me anything of the sort. I despise paradoxes, I hate them. All that I said to you about irony I would say over again about paradoxes, and more besides. Paradox is the poisonous flower of quietism, the iridescent surface of the rotting mind, the greatest depravity of all! Moreover, I note that you are once more defending disease⁠—”