Henri Barbusse quotes - page 6

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)
I dimly see that there is something more than what we have seen, than what we have said, than what we have felt to-day. One day, perhaps, she and I will exchange better and richer sayings; and so, in that day, all the sadness will be of some service. View quote
Henri Barbusse
It is not only a right; it is a virtue. View quote
Henri Barbusse
The idea of motherland is not a false idea, but it is a little idea, and one which must remain little. View quote
Henri Barbusse
There are official proclamations, full of the notion of liberty and rights, which would be beautiful if they said truly what they say. But they who compose them do not attach their full meaning to the words. What they recite they are not capable of wanting, nor even of understanding. View quote
Henri Barbusse
I believe in a lofty form of poetry, in the work in which beauty will be mingled with beliefs. View quote
Henri Barbusse
To understand life, and love it to its depths in a living being, that is the being's task, and that his masterpiece. View quote
Henri Barbusse
The noblest and most fruitful work of the human intelligence is to make a clean sweep of every enforced idea - of advantages or meanings - and to go right through appearances in search of the eternal bases. View quote
Henri Barbusse
It is not true, it is not true. View quote
Henri Barbusse
The principle of the equal rights of every living being and the sacred will of the majority is infallible and must be invincible; all progress will be brought about by it, all, with a force truly divine. It will bring first the smooth bed-rock of all progress - the settling of quarrels by that justice which is exactly the same thing as the general advantage. View quote
Henri Barbusse
The dead are specters of the living, but the living are specters of the dead. (Henri Barbusse)
No, you do not elevate aberration into an ideal, and illusion is always a stain, whatever the name you lend it. View quote
Henri Barbusse
I have searched, I have indistinctly seen, I have doubted. Now, I hope. View quote
Henri Barbusse
Only the idolatrous and the weak have need of illusion as of a remedy. View quote
Henri Barbusse
He who would dig right down to the truth must simplify; his faith must be brutally simple, or he is lost. View quote
Henri Barbusse
I came and went in the midst of the naked truth. I am not a man of peculiar and exceptional traits. I recognise myself in everybody. I have the same desires, the same longings as the ordinary human being. View quote
Henri Barbusse
They are your enemies, wherever they were born, however they pronounce their names, whatever the language in which they lie. Look at them, in the heaven and on the earth. Look at them, everywhere! Identify them once for all, and be mindful for ever! View quote
Henri Barbusse
We may no longer be able to count; but Fate will count. View quote
Henri Barbusse
Paradis, possessed by his notion, waved his hand towards the wide unspeakable landscape. and looking steadily on it repeated his sentence, 'War is that. View quote
Henri Barbusse
When you look straight on, you end by seeing the immense event - death. There is only one thing which really gives the meaning of our whole life, and that is our death. In that terrible light may they judge their hearts who will one day die. View quote
Henri Barbusse
Against all the chains of facts I must have long arguments to bring; and the world's chaos requires an interpretation equally terrible. (Henri Barbusse)
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. View quote
Henri Barbusse
It is not yet hostility around me; but it is already a rupture. View quote
Henri Barbusse
Paradis says to me, "That's war." "Yes, that's it," he repeats in a far-away voice, "that's war. It's not anything else." View quote
Henri Barbusse
Men have gone towards each other because of that ray of light which each of them contains; and light resembles light. View quote
Henri Barbusse