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 … - Henri Barbusse

The revelation still seems to me so terrible that the silence of men, heaped under the roofs down there at my feet, seizes and threatens me. And if I am but timidly formulating it within myself, that is because each of us has lived in reality more than his life, and because my training has filled me, like the rest, with centuries of shadow, of humiliation and captivity. It is establishing itself cautiously; but it is the truth, and there are moments when logic seizes you in its godlike whirlwind.

All is madness. And there is no one who will dare to rise and say that all is not madness, and that the future does not so appear — as fatal and unchangeable as a memory. But how many men will there be who will dare, in face of the universal deluge which will be at the end as it was in the beginning, to get up and cry "No!" who will pronounce the terrible and irrefutable issue: — "No! The interests of the people and the interests of all their present overlords are not the same.

Granted that I have the great wisdom to rid myself of the haunting dread of my own death, there remains the death of others and the death of so many feelings and so much sweetness. It is not the conception of truth that will change sorrow. Sorrow, like joy, is absolute. And yet! The infinite grandeur of our misery becomes confused with glory and almost with happiness, with cold haughty happiness. Was it out of pride or joy that I began to smile when the first white streaks of dawn turned my lamp pale and I saw I was alone in the universe?