Henri Barbusse > Quotes

“I am more sensitive than other people. Things that other people would not notice awaken a distinct echo in me, and in such moments of lucidity, when I look at myself, I see that I am alone, all alone, all alone.”
― Henri Barbusse, The Inferno / Under Fire / Light

“It was suicide. Others killed themselves with poison or with a revolver. I killed myself with minutes and hours.”
― Henri Barbusse, Hell

“I keep remembering — I keep remembering. My heart has no pity on me.”
― Henri Barbusse

“All lovers in the world are alike: they fall in love by chance; they see each other, and are attached to each other by the features of their faces; they illuminate each other by the fierce preference which is akin to madness; they assert the reality of illusions; and for a moment they change falsehood into truth.”
― Henri Barbusse, Hell

“I believe that around us there is only one word on all sides, one immense word which reveals our solitude and extinguishes our radiance: Nothing! I believe that that word does not point to our insignificance or our unhappiness, but on the contrary to our fulfillment and our divinity, since everything is in ourselves.”
― Henri Barbusse, Hell

“The memory of you saddened my joys, but consoled my sorrows.”
― Henri Barbusse, Hell

“I love you, but I love the past even more. I long for it, I long for it, I am consumed with longing for it. The past! I shall cry, I shall suffer because the past will never come back again.”
― Henri Barbusse, Hell

“At the touch of mankind, things wear away with heartbreaking slowness.”
― Henri Barbusse, Hell

“The woman from the depths of her rags, a waif, a martyr — smiled. She must have a divine heart to be so tired and yet smile.”
― Henri Barbusse, Hell

“It is not by sin that we attain happiness, nor is it by virtue, nor is it by that kind of divine fire by which one makes great instinctive decisions and which is neither good not evil. It is by none of these things that one reaches happiness. One never reaches happiness.”
― Henri Barbusse, Hell

“How I waited for you! How I longed for you! he stammered. "I thought of you all the time. I saw you all the time. Your smile was everywhere." He lowered his voice and added, "Sometimes when people were talking commonplaces and your name happened to be mentioned, It would go through my heart like an electric current.”
― Henri Barbusse, Hell

“Humanity is the desire for novelty founded upon the fear of death”
― Henri Barbusse, Hell

“I saw that they wanted to kill the past. When we are old, we let it die; when we are young and strong, we kill it.”
― Henri Barbusse, Hell

“We have the divinity of our great misery. And our solitude, with its toilsome ideas, tears and laughter, is fatally divine.”
― Henri Barbusse, Hell

“I watched her cry--drown herself in a flood of tears. It is a great thing to be in the presence of a rational being who cries. A weak, broken creature shedding tears makes the same impression as an all-powerful god to whom one prays. In her weakness and defeat Amy was above human power.”
― Henri Barbusse, Hell

“There is an attraction for you which does not exist for me, since I do not feel any pleasure. You see, we are making a bargain. You give me a dream, I give you joy. But all this is not love.”
― Henri Barbusse, Hell

“You will tell me the quiet story of your day's work, without any object except to give me your thoughts and your life. You will speak of your childhood memories. I shall not understand them very well because You will be able to give me, perforce, only insufficient details, but I shall love your sweet strange language.”
― Henri Barbusse, Hell

“I had no genius, no mission to fulfill, no great heart to bestow. I had nothing and I deserved nothing. But all the same I desired some sort of reward.”
― Henri Barbusse, Hell

“But my whole body is one pain. I cannot stand on my legs anymore. I stagger. I fall back on my bed. My eyes close and fill with smarting tears. I want to be crucified on the wall, but I cannot. My body becomes heavier and heavier and filled with sharper pain. My flesh is enraged against me.

I hear voices through the wall. The next room vibrates with a distant sound, a mist of sound which scarcely comes through the wall.

I shall not be able to listen anymore, or look into the room, or hear anything distinctly. And I, who have not cried since my childhood, I cry now like a child because of all that I shall never have. I cry over lost beauty and grandeur. I love everything that I should have embraced.”
― Henri Barbusse, Hell

“These are not soldiers, these are men. They are notadventurers or warriors, designed for human butchery - as butchers or cattle. They are the ploughmen or workers that one recognizes even in their uniforms. They are uprooted civilians. They are ready, waiting for the signal for death or murder, but when you examine their faces between the vertical ranks of bayonets, they are nothing but men.”
― Henri Barbusse, Under Fire

“There is no paradise except that which we create in the great tomb of the churches. There is no hell, no inferno except the frenzy of living.”
― Henri Barbusse

“Sin, sin! To rid myself of boredom by committing a crime, to break up monotony by deceiving. To sin in order to be a new person, another person. To hate life worse than it hated me. To sin so as not to die.”
― Henri Barbusse, Hell

“ليس هناك اجمل واقوى من ان يتقرب انسان من انسان اخر مهما يكن من امره”
― Henri Barbusse, Hell

“They felt that everything was fleeting, that everything wore out, that everything that was not dead would die, and that even the illusory ties holding them together would not endure. Their sadness did not bring them together. On the contrary, they were separated by all the force of their two sorrows. To suffer together, alas, what disunion!”
― Henri Barbusse

“Separation! They were very much alike in ideas and temperament, and just then they were helping each other as much as they could. But I saw clearly--I who was a spectator apart from men and whose gaze soared above them--that they were strangers, and that in spite of all appearances they did not see nor hear each other any more. They conversed as best they could, but neither could yield to the other, and each tried to conquer the other. And this terrible battle broke my heart.”
― Henri Barbusse

“Happiness needs unhappiness. Joy goes hand in hand with sorrow. It is thanks to the shadow that we exist. We must not dream of an absurd abstraction. We must guard the bond that links us to blood and earth.”
― Henri Barbusse, Hell

“We have the divinity of our great misery. And our solitude, with its toilsome ideas, tears and laughter, is fatally divine. However wrong we may go in the dark and the useless work of our hearts working incessantly, and whatever our ignorance left to itself, and whatever the wounds that other human beings are, we ought to study ourselves with a sort of devotion. It is this sentiment that lights our foreheads, uplifts our souls, adorns our pride, and, in spite of everything, will console us when we shall become accustomed to holding, each at his own poor task, the whole place that God used to occupy. The truth itself gives an effective, practical, and, so to speak, religious caress to the suppliant in whom the heavens spread.

.....

"I have such respect for the actual truth that there are moments when I do not dare to call things by their name," the poet ended.”
― Henri Barbusse, Hell

“I am incapable of carrying on a discussion to fruitful lengths. I am incapable of the audacity of being logical. I confess to you, my boy, I have not the strength to be right.”
― Henri Barbusse

“يري أكثر و أعمق مما يجب”
― Henri Barbusse

“Let everything be remade on simple lines. There is only one people, there is only one people!”
― Henri Barbusse, Hell