xy

@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023

Favourite quotes (21448)

“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) French novelist

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XVI

“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) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XV - An Apparition

“"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) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XIV - The Ruins

“"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) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XIV - The Ruins

“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) French novelist

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XVI

“I stood still, a prey to a thousand thoughts, stifled in the robe of the evening.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XVI

“Marie falls back upon her idea, obdurately, and says, "A woman only lives by love and for love. When she's no longer good for that she's no longer anything."
She repeats, "You see — I'm nothing any more."
Ah, she is at the bottom of her abyss! She is at the extremity of a woman's mourning! She is not thinking only of me. Her thought is higher and vaster. She is thinking of all the woman she is, of all that love is, of all possible things when she says, "I'm no longer anything." And I — I am only he who is present with her just now, and no help whatever is left her to look for from any one.
I should like to pacify and console this woman who is gentleness and simplicity and who is sinking there while she lightly touches me with her presence — but exactly because she is there I cannot lie to her, I can do nothing against her grief, her perfect, infallible grief.
"Ah!" she cries, "if we came to life again!"”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XIX - Ghosts

“"We shall say to ourselves," says one, "'After all, why do we make war?' We don't know at all why, but we can say who we make it for. We shall be forced to see that if every nation every day brings the fresh bodies of fifteen hundred young men to the God of War to be lacerated, it's for the pleasure of a few ringleaders that we could easily count; that if whole nations go to slaughter marshaled in armies in order that the gold-striped caste may write their princely names in history, so that other gilded people of the same rank can contrive more business, and expand in the way of employees and shops — and we shall see, as soon as we open our eyes, that the divisions between mankind are not what we thought, and those one did believe in are not divisions."”

Henri Barbusse book Under Fire

Under Fire (1916), Ch. 24 - The Dawn

“Once, after we had recalled to each other an enchanted summer evening, I said, "We loved each other," and she answered, "I remember."”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XIX - Ghosts

“Each country will be a moral force, and no longer a brutal force; while all brutal forces clash with themselves, all moral forces make mighty harmony together.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XXII - Light

“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) French novelist

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XVI

“There have been those who magnificently dared. There have been bearers of the truth, men who groped in the world's tumult, trying to make plain order of it. They discover what we did not yet know; chiefly they discover what we no longer knew.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XVI - De Profundis Clamavi

“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) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XV - An Apparition

“When I have spoken thus, we are no longer the same, for there are no more lies.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XXIII - Face To Face

“I take her hand, as I did before. I speak to her, rather timidly and at random: "Carnal love isn't the whole of love."”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

"It's love!" Marie answers.
Light (1919), Ch. XXIII - Face To Face

“Through centuries of centuries, fire and water face each other; the fire, upright, buoyant and leaping; the water flat, creeping, gliding, widening its lines and its surface. When they touch, is it the water which hisses and roars, or is it the fire?”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XVI - De Profundis Clamavi

“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) French novelist

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XIV

“All that we can remember is almost nothing. Memory is greater than we are, but memory is living and mortal as well.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XXIII - Face To Face

“I — my heart — a gaping heart, enthroned in a radiance of blood. It is mine, it is ours. The heart — that wound which we have. I have compassion on myself.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XVI - De Profundis Clamavi

“Stop war? Impossible! There is no cure for the world's disease.”

Henri Barbusse book Under Fire

Under Fire (1916), Ch. 1 - The Vision