“There is nothing between the paradise dreamed of and the paradise lost. There is nothing, since we always want what we have not got. We hope, and then we regret.”
Light (1919), Ch. XXIII - Face To Face
Context: There is nothing between the paradise dreamed of and the paradise lost. There is nothing, since we always want what we have not got. We hope, and then we regret. We hope for the future, and then we turn to the past, and then we begin slowly and desperately to hope for the past! The two most violent and abiding feelings, hope and regret, both lean upon nothing. To ask, to ask, to have not! Humanity is exactly the same thing as poverty. Happiness has not the time to live; we have not really the time to profit by what we are. Happiness, that thing which never is — and which yet, for one day, is no longer!
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Henri Barbusse 197
French novelist 1873–1935Related quotes

“What good is regret? It brings back nothing. What we have lost is irretrievable.”
Source: And the Mountains Echoed

“We come from nothing, we are going back to nothing-In the end what have we lost? Nothing!”

“The best paradise is the paradise we are exiled from.”
The Secrets of Ishbar (1996)

John Rivers in The Genius and the Goddess (1955)
Context: You can't worship a spirit in spirit, unless you do it now. Wallowing in the past may be good literature. As wisdom, it's hopeless. Time Regained is Paradise Lost, and Time Lost is Paradise Regained. Let the dead bury their dead. If you want to live at every moment as it presents itself, you've got to die to every other moment.