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Henri Barbusse

159 quotes

“The dead do not survive except upon earth. Wherever there are revolutionaries, there is Lenin. But one may also say that it is in Stalin more than anyone else that the thoughts and words of Lenin are to be found. He is the Lenin of today.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: About Joseph Stalin, Stalin: A New World Seen Through One Man (1935), p. 275.
“War! Some of the invalids break the silence, and say the word again under their breath, reflecting that this is the greatest happening of the age, and perhaps of all ages. Even on the lucid landscape at which they gaze the news casts something like a vague and somber mirage.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Each country whose frontiers are consumed by carnage is seen tearing from its heart ever more warriors of full blood and force. One's eyes follow the flow of these living tributaries to the River of Death. To north and south and west ajar there are battles on every side. Turn where you will, there is war in every corner of that vastness.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Two armies at death-grips — that is one great army committing suicide.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Stop war? Impossible! There is no cure for the world's disease.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Put an end to war?" say the watchers. — "Forbid the Storm!" Cleansed from the passions of party and faction, liberated from prejudice and infatuation and the tyranny of tradition, these watchers on the threshold of another world are vaguely conscious of the simplicity of the present and the yawning possibilities of the future.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The streaming plain, seamed and seared with long parallel canals and scooped into water-holes, is an immensity, and these castaways who strive to exhume themselves from it are legion. But the thirty million slaves, hurled upon one another in the mud of war by guilt and error, uplift their human faces and reveal at last a bourgeoning Will. The future is in the hands of these slaves, and it is clearly certain that the alliance to be cemented some day by those whose number and whose misery alike are infinite will transform the old world.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's with us only that they make battles. It is we who are the material of war. War is made up of the flesh and the souls of common soldiers only. It is we who make the plains of dead and the rivers of blood, all of us, and each of us is invisible and silent because of the immensity of our numbers. The emptied towns and the villages destroyed, they are a wilderness of our making. Yes, war is all of us, and all of us together.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Paradis, possessed by his notion, waved his hand towards the wide unspeakable landscape. and looking steadily on it repeated his sentence, 'War is that. It is that everywhere. What are we, we chaps, and what's all this here? Nothing at all. All we can see is only a speck. You've got to remember that this morning there's three thousand kilometers of equal evils, or nearly equal, or worse." "And then," said the comrade at our side, whom we could not recognize even by his voice, "to-morrow it begins again. It began again the day before yesterday, and all the days before that!”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The man raised himself, fell down, and rose again. The wound that he had under his armor of filth was staining the ground, and when he had spoken, his wide-open eyes looked down at all the blood he had given for the healing of the world.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The others, one by one, straighten themselves. The storm is falling more heavily on the expanse of flayed and martyred fields. The day is full of night.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One sees their shadows stirring on the shining sad expanse of the plain, and reflected in the pallid stagnant surface of the old trenches, which now only the infinite void of space inhabits and purifies, in the center of a polar desert whose horizons fume. But their eyes are opened. They are beginning to make out the boundless simplicity of things. And Truth not only invests them with a dawn of hope, but raises on it a renewal of strength and courage.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“While we get ready to rejoin the others and begin war again, the dark and storm-choked sky slowly opens above our heads. Between two masses of gloomy cloud a tranquil gleam emerges; and that line of light, so blackedged and beset, brings even so its proof that the sun is there.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Moving in both directions, the street is full of dresses which sway, offering themselves airily, the skirts lifting; dresses which lift and yet do not lift. In the tall and narrow shop mirror I see myself approaching, rather pale and heavy-eyed. It is not a woman I want — it is all women. And I seek for them in those around me, one by one...”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Defeated, I followed my impulse casually. I followed a woman who had been watching me from her corner. Then we walked side by side. We said a few words; she took me home with her. Then I went through the banal scene. It passed like a sudden hurtling–down. Again, I am on the pavement and I am not at peace as I had hoped. An immense confusion bewilders me. It is as if I could not see things as they were. I see too deep and too much.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am like a poet on the threshold of a work, an accursed, sterile poet who will leave no glory behind, to whom chance lent the truth that genius would have given him, a frail work which will pass away with me, mortal and sealed to others like myself, but a sublime work nevertheless, which will show the essential outlines of life and relate the drama of dramas.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Where are the words that will light the way? What is humanity in the world, and what is the world? Everything is within me, and there are no judges, and there are no boundaries and no limits to me. The de profundis, the effort not to die, the fall of desire with its soaring cry, all this has not stopped. It is part of the immense liberty which the incessant mechanism of the human heart exercises (always something different, always!).”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We do not die. Each human being is alone in the world. It seems absurd, contradictory to say this, and yet it is so. But there are many human beings like me. No, we cannot say that. In saying that, we set ourselves outside the truth in a kind of abstraction. All we can say is: I am alone. And that is why we do not die.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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?”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I followed them with my eyes going through life, which would be nothing to them but fields, mountains, or forests. I saw them veiled in a kind of light, sheltered from darkness, protected for a time against the fearful spell of memory and thought.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I sat down and leaned on my elbows. I thought of myself. Where was I now after all this? What was I going to do in life? I did not know. I would look about and would surely find something. So, sitting there, I quietly indulged in hopes. I must have no more sadness, no more anguish and fever. If the rest of my life was to pass in calm, in peace, I must go far, far away from all those awful serious things, the sight of which was terrible to bear.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Tenderness is greater than love. I do not admire carnal love when it is by itself and bare. I do not admire its disorderly selfish paroxysms, so grossly short-lived. And yet without love the attachment of two human beings is always weak. Love must be added to affection. The things it contributes to a union are absolutely needed — exclusiveness, intimacy, and simplicity.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I went out on the street like an exile, I who am an everyday man, who resemble everybody else so much, too much. I went through the streets and crossed the squares with my eyes fixed upon things without seeing them. I was walking, but I seemed to be falling from dream to dream, from desire to desire. A door ajar, an open window gave me a pang. A woman passing by grazed against me, a woman who told me nothing of what she might have told me. I dreamed of her tragedy and of mine. She entered a house, she disappeared, she was dead.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I stood still, a prey to a thousand thoughts, stifled in the robe of the evening.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The people who live my truth, what do they say when they speak of themselves? Does the echo of what I am thinking issue from their mouths, or error, or falsehood?”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Night fell. I looked for a word like mine, a word to lean upon, a word to sustain me. And it seemed to me that I was going along groping my way as if expecting some one to come from round the corner and tell me everything.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I lifted my glass to my lips when suddenly I stopped and felt all my blood rush to my heart. This is what I heard: "What's the theme of the novel you're working on?" "Truth," replied Pierre Villiers. "What?" exclaimed his friend. "A succession of human beings caught just as they are.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is the subject," said Pierre Villiers. "It gives me scope to amuse and tell the truth at the same time. A man pierces a hole in the wall of a boarding-house room, and watches what is going on in the next room.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And he continued to travesty the truth, and I was impotent — the truth, that profound thing whose voice was in my ears, whose shadow was in my eyes, and whose taste was in my mouth. Was I so utterly forsaken? Would no one speak the word I was in search of?”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The poet seemed to be searching for something, to be seeing things, and believing infinitely. He was in another world where everything we see is true and everything we say is unforgettable.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I come back as I always do to the greatness of mankind's curse, and I repeat it with the monotony of those who are always right — oh, without God, without a harbour, without enough rags to cover us, all we have, standing erect on the land of the dead, is the rebellion of our smile, the rebellion of being gay when darkness envelops us. We are divinely alone, the heavens have fallen on our heads.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She had fallen asleep with her head on her lover's knees. He looked at her and smiled. An expression of pity and benevolence flitted across his face. His hands stretched out part way toward the sleeping woman with the gentleness of strength. I saw the glorious pride of condescension and charity in this man whom a woman prostrate before him deified.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have given notice. I am going away to-morrow evening, I with my tremendous memory. Whatever may happen, whatever tragedies may be reserved for me in the future, my thought will not be graver or more important when I shall have lived my life with all its weight. But my whole body is one pain. I cannot stand on my legs any more. 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.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What I have seen is going to disappear, since I shall do nothing with it. I am like a mother the fruit of whose womb will perish after it has been born. What matter? I have heard the annunciation of whatever finer things are to come. Through me has passed, without staying me in my course, the Word which does not lie, and which, said over again, will satisfy.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have only one recourse, to remember and to believe. To hold on with all my strength to the memory of the tragedy of the Room. I believe that the only thing which confronts the heart and the reason is the shadow of that which the heart and the reason cry for. I believe that around us there is only one word, the immense word which takes us out of our solitude, NOTHING. I believe that this does not signify our nothingness or our misfortune, but, on the contrary, our realisation and our deification, since everything is within us.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am looking for the happiness which lives. And truly, when I have a sense of some new assent wavering and making ready, or when I am on the way to a first rendezvous, I feel myself gloriously uplifted, and equal to everything! This fills my life. Desire wears the brain as much as thought wears it. All my being is agog for chances to shine and to be shared. When they say in my presence of some young woman that, "she is not happy," a thrill of joy tears through me.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am alone on the earth, face to face with the mud, and I can no longer move. The frightful searching of the shells alights around me. The hoarse hurricane which does not know me is yet trying to find the place where I am! Then the battle goes away, and its departure is heartrending. In spite of all my efforts, the noise of the firing fades and I am alone; the wind blows and I am naked.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am not in pain. I am extraordinarily calm; I am drunk with tranquillity. Are they dead, all — those? I do not know. The dead are specters of the living, but the living are specters of the dead. Something warm is licking my hand. The black mass which overhangs me is trembling. It is a foundered horse, whose great body is emptying itself, whose blood is flowing like poor touches of a tongue on to my hand.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Men must not awake," the shining shadow goes on, in dull and hollow tones. "Don't worry!" says the ironical voice, and at that moment it terrifies me. Several bodies arise on their fists into the darkness — I see them by their heavy groans — and look around them. The shadow talks to himself and repeats his insane words: — "Men must not awake." The voice opposite me, capsizing in laughter and swollen with a rattle, says again: — "Don't worry!”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Suddenly I am pushed by a movement of the horse on which I am lying. I see that he has turned his great head aside; he is mournfully eating grass. I saw this horse but lately in the middle of the regiment — I know him by the white in his mane — rearing and whinnying like the true battle-chargers; and now, broken somewhere, he is silent as the truly unhappy are.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Animals are innocence incarnate. This horse is like an enormous child, and if one wanted to point out life's innocence face to face, one would have to typify, not a little child, but a horse.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The truth is revolutionary," gasps the nocturnal voice; "get you gone, you men of truth, you who cast disorder among ignorance, you who strew words and sow the wind; you contrivers, begone! You bring in the reign of men! But the multitude hates you and mocks you!”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have confidence in the abyss of the people." And those words stabbed me to the heart and dilated my eyes with horror, for it seemed to me suddenly, in a flash, that he understood what he was saying!”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The horse has not stopped bleeding. Its blood falls on me drop by drop with the regularity of a clock, — as though all the blood that is filtering through the strata of the field and all the punishment of the wounded came to a head in him and through him. Ah, it seems that truth goes farther in all directions than one thought! We bend over the wrong that animals suffer, for them we wholly understand. Men, men! Everywhere the plain has a mangled outline. Below that horizon, sometimes blue-black and sometimes red-black, the plain is monumental!”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Quite near, one face is looking sadly at me, as it lolls to one side. It is coming out of the bottom of the heap, as a wild animal might. Its hair falls back like nails. The nose is a triangular hole and a little of the whiteness of human marble dots it. There are no lips left, and the two rows of teeth show up like lettering. The cheeks are sprinkled with moldy traces of beard. This body is only mud and stones. This face, in front of my own, is only a consummate mirror.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am frozen by a mass which supports me. My elbow sinks into it. It is the horse's belly; its rigid leg obliquely bars the narrow circle from which my eyes cannot escape. Ah, it is dead! It seems to me that my breast is empty, yet still there is an echo in my heart. What I am looking for is life.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Death is not yet dead everywhere. Some points and surfaces still resist and budge and cry out, doubtless because it is dawn; and once the wind swept away a muffled bugle-call. There are some who still burn with the invisible fire of fever, in spite of the frozen periods they have crossed. But the cold is working into them. The immobility of lifeless things is passing into them, and the wind empties itself as it goes by.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think of myself, of all that I am. Myself, my home, my hours; the past, and the future, — it was going to be like the past! And at that moment I feel, weeping within me and dragging itself from some little bygone trifle, a new and tragical sorrow in dying, a hunger to be warm once more in the rain and the cold: to enclose myself in myself in spite of space, to hold myself back, to live.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I felt the beginning of a farewell rise in me like a sob. But there are too many of them for one to mourn them all. How many of them are there on all this plain? How many, how many of them are there in all this moment? Our heart is only made for one heart at a time. It wears us out to look at all. One may say, "There are the others," but it is only a saying. "You shall not know; you shall not know.”
Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source