At the touch of mankind, things wear away with heartbreaking slowness. - Henri Barbusse

You can no more look destiny in the face than you can look at the sun, and yet destiny is grey

It would be a crime to exhibit the fine side of war, even if there were one! murmured one of the somber soldiers. The first man continued. "They'll say those things to us by way of paying us with glory, and to pay themselves, too, for what they haven't done. But military glory — it isn't even true for us common soldiers. It's for some, but outside those elect the soldier's glory is a lie, like every other fine-looking thing in war. In reality, the soldier's sacrifice is obscurely concealed. The multitudes that make up the waves of attack have no reward. They run to hurl themselves into a frightful inglorious nothing. You cannot even heap up their names, their poor little names of nobodies."

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.