“We do not die. Each human being is alone in the world.”

—  Henri Barbusse

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XIV
Context: 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.

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Henri Barbusse 197
French novelist 1873–1935

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