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Quotes from The Inferno — Henri Barbusse

1873–1935 France

← All quotes by Henri Barbusse

30 quotes

In life's tragedy, separation is the only thing one sees.

The Inferno (1917)

Will the great poet come who shall settle the boundaries of belief and render it eternal, the poet who will be, not a fool, not an ignorant orator, but a wise man, the great inexorable poet?

The Inferno (1917)

I believe in a lofty form of poetry, in the work in which beauty will be mingled with beliefs.

The Inferno (1917)

I have only one recourse, to remember and to believe.

The Inferno (1917)

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

The Inferno (1917)

What I have seen is going to disappear, since I shall do nothing with it.

The Inferno (1917)

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

The Inferno (1917)

The woman from the depths of her rags, a waif, a martyr — smiled. She must have a divine heart to be so tired and yet smile.

The Inferno (1917)

I, who have not cried since my childhood, I cry now like a child because of all that I shall never have. I cry over lost beauty and grandeur. I love everything that I should have embraced.

The Inferno (1917)

She was like a great rose that opens its heart to the whole world.

The Inferno (1917)

I thought of all those wise men, poets, artists before me who had suffered, wept, and smiled on the road to truth.

The Inferno (1917)

It is not a woman I want — it is all women. And I seek for them in those around me, one by one...

The Inferno (1917)

All this is within us, and has fallen upon our heads. And God Himself, who is all these kinds of heavens in one, has fallen on our heads like thunder, and His infinity is ours.

The Inferno (1917)

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?

The Inferno (1917)

Who shall compose the Bible of human desire, the terrible and simple Bible of that which drives us from life to life, the Bible of our doings, our goings, our original fall?

The Inferno (1917)

Turn where you will, everywhere, the man and the woman ever confronting each other, the man who loves a hundred times, the woman who has the power to love so much and to forget so much.

The Inferno (1917)

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.

The Inferno (1917)

We have the divinity of our great misery. And our solitude, with its toilsome ideas, tears and laughter, is fatally divine.

The Inferno (1917)

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.

The Inferno (1917)

I wanted to know the secret of life.

The Inferno (1917)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Henri Barbusse (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.