Henri Barbusse Quotes

Let everything be remade on simple lines. There is only one people, there is only one people!

Déjà, le mois de septembre, lendemain d'août et veille d'octobre et qui est par sa situation le plus émouvant des mois parsème les beaux jours de quelques fins avertissements. Déjà, on comprend ces feuilles mortes qui courent sur les pierres plates comme une bande de moineaux.

Shame on military glory, shame on armies, shame on the soldier's profession, which changes men, some into stupid victims, others into base executioners. Yes shame, that's true – but it's too true, it's true in eternity, but not yet for us.

Human suffering is a positive thing, which requires a positive answer, and sad as it is, the word is beautiful, because of the absolute truth it contains.[...] It is an error to believe that we can be happy in perfect calm and clearness, as abstract as a formula. We are made too much out of shadow and some form of suffering. If everything that hurts us were to be removed, what would remain?

"I was not at ease that night. I was a prey to an immense distress. I sat as if I had fallen into my chair. As on the first day I looked at my reflection in the glass, and all I could do was just what I had done then, simply cry, "I!

She was thinking of him. Doubled up, small as a child, she gazed intently into the distance, at the man who was not there. She bowed to this image like a suppliant, and felt a divine reflection from it falling upon her — from the offended man, the wounded man, from the master, from him who was everywhere except where they were, who occupied the immense outside, and whose name made them bow their heads, the man to whom they were a prey.

"Ah, my poor child, how far gone you are in your blindness! Why did you have me summoned?"

"I had hopes, I had hopes."

"Hopes? Hopes of what?"

"I do not know. The things we hope for are always the things we do not know."

...patriotism has become a narrow offensive sentiment which as long as it lives will maintain war and exhaust the world

الجدار القائم بذاته

مقفِراً وصلباً

كأنما استعار روح الجبل المجاور.

اللوحةُ في وسطه لا تقول إلا حيرتَها،

أمام غزارة هذا الفراغ

الجدار بمزاجه الدمويّ

لا تغيّره الألوان

ولا تلك البنفسجات المفكرّة في الأصيص

والكؤوس المرتّبة بنظافة على الرفوف.

الجدار المحروس بعناية الوحشة

I had seen the struggle to love and make one's self understood, the refusal of two persons in conversation to give themselves to each other, the coming together of two lovers, the lovers with an infectious smile, who are lovers in name only, who bury themselves in kisses, who press wound to wound to cure themselves, between whom there is really no attachment, and who, in spite of their ecstasy deriving light from shadow, are strangers as much as the sun and the moon are strangers.

I do not recall my own first glance of love, my own first gift of love. Yet it happened. Those divine simplicities are erased from my heart. Good God, then what do I retain that is of value? The little boy that I was is dead forever, before my eyes. I survived him, but forgetfulness tormented me, then overcame me, the sad process of living ruined me, and I scarcely know what he knew. I remember things at random only, but the most beautiful, the sweetest memories are gone.

I saw nothing more now than the pallor of my face, with deep orbits, buried in the twilight, and my mouth filled with a silence which gently but surely stifles and destroys.

It was her work of art, her poem and her prayer, to repeat this story, low and precipitately, as if she were in the confessional. You felt that she came to it quite naturally, without transition, so completely did it posses her whenever they were alone.

Two armies fighting each other are like one big army that commits suicide.

I had no children and shall have none. There are moments when this troubles me, when I reflect that with me a line will end which has lasted since the beginning of humanity.