Quotes from Hell

“It was suicide. Others killed themselves with poison or with a revolver. I killed myself with minutes and hours.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Hell

“I believe that around us there is only one word on all sides, one immense word which reveals our solitude and extinguishes our radiance: Nothing! I believe that that word does not point to our insignificance or our unhappiness, but on the contrary to our fulfillment and our divinity, since everything is in ourselves.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Hell

“All lovers in the world are alike: they fall in love by chance; they see each other, and are attached to each other by the features of their faces; they illuminate each other by the fierce preference which is akin to madness; they assert the reality of illusions; and for a moment they change falsehood into truth.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Hell

“I love you, but I love the past even more. I long for it, I long for it, I am consumed with longing for it. The past! I shall cry, I shall suffer because the past will never come back again.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Hell

“The memory of you saddened my joys, but consoled my sorrows.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Hell

“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.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Hell

“At the touch of mankind, things wear away with heartbreaking slowness.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Hell

“It is not by sin that we attain happiness, nor is it by virtue, nor is it by that kind of divine fire by which one makes great instinctive decisions and which is neither good not evil. It is by none of these things that one reaches happiness. One never reaches happiness.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Hell

“How I waited for you! How I longed for you! he stammered. "I thought of you all the time. I saw you all the time. Your smile was everywhere." He lowered his voice and added, "Sometimes when people were talking commonplaces and your name happened to be mentioned, It would go through my heart like an electric current.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Hell

“But my whole body is one pain. I cannot stand on my legs anymore. I stagger. I fall back on my bed. My eyes close and fill with smarting tears. I want to be crucified on the wall, but I cannot. My body becomes heavier and heavier and filled with sharper pain. My flesh is enraged against me.

I hear voices through the wall. The next room vibrates with a distant sound, a mist of sound which scarcely comes through the wall.

I shall not be able to listen anymore, or look into the room, or hear anything distinctly. And 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.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Hell

“We have the divinity of our great misery. And our solitude, with its toilsome ideas, tears and laughter, is fatally divine.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Hell

“There is an attraction for you which does not exist for me, since I do not feel any pleasure. You see, we are making a bargain. You give me a dream, I give you joy. But all this is not love.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Hell

“I watched her cry--drown herself in a flood of tears. It is a great thing to be in the presence of a rational being who cries. A weak, broken creature shedding tears makes the same impression as an all-powerful god to whom one prays. In her weakness and defeat Amy was above human power.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Hell

“You will tell me the quiet story of your day's work, without any object except to give me your thoughts and your life. You will speak of your childhood memories. I shall not understand them very well because You will be able to give me, perforce, only insufficient details, but I shall love your sweet strange language.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Hell

“ليس هناك اجمل واقوى من ان يتقرب انسان من انسان اخر مهما يكن من امره”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Hell

“I saw that they wanted to kill the past. When we are old, we let it die; when we are young and strong, we kill it.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Hell

“Sin, sin! To rid myself of boredom by committing a crime, to break up monotony by deceiving. To sin in order to be a new person, another person. To hate life worse than it hated me. To sin so as not to die.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Hell

“I had no genius, no mission to fulfill, no great heart to bestow. I had nothing and I deserved nothing. But all the same I desired some sort of reward.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Hell

“...love is only a kind of festival of solitude”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Hell

“She was thinking of him. Doubled up, small as a child, she gazed intently into the distance, at the man who was not there. She bowed to this image like a suppliant, and felt a divine reflection from it falling upon her--from the offended man, the wounded man, from the master, from him who was everywhere except where they were, who occupied the immense outside, and whose name made them bow their heads, the man to whom they were a prey.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Hell

“I was not at ease that night. I was a prey to an immense distress. I sat as if I had fallen into my chair. As on the first day I looked at my reflection in the glass, and all I could do was just what I had done then, simply cry, "I!”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Hell

“We have the divinity of our great misery. And our solitude, with its toilsome ideas, tears and laughter, is fatally divine. However wrong we may go in the dark and the useless work of our hearts working incessantly, and whatever our ignorance left to itself, and whatever the wounds that other human beings are, we ought to study ourselves with a sort of devotion. It is this sentiment that lights our foreheads, uplifts our souls, adorns our pride, and, in spite of everything, will console us when we shall become accustomed to holding, each at his own poor task, the whole place that God used to occupy. The truth itself gives an effective, practical, and, so to speak, religious caress to the suppliant in whom the heavens spread.

.....

"I have such respect for the actual truth that there are moments when I do not dare to call things by their name," the poet ended.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Hell

“Let everything be remade on simple lines. There is only one people, there is only one people!”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Hell

“Happiness needs unhappiness. Joy goes hand in hand with sorrow. It is thanks to the shadow that we exist. We must not dream of an absurd abstraction. We must guard the bond that links us to blood and earth.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Hell

“It was her work of art, her poem and her prayer, to repeat this story, low and precipitately, as if she were in the confessional. You felt that she came to it quite naturally, without transition, so completely did it posses her whenever they were alone.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Hell

“In so speaking they saw further than the flesh. In their remorse and disgust it was not mere physical disillusionment that so crushed them. They saw further. They were overcome by an impression of bleak truth, of aridity, of growing nothingness, at the thought that they had so many times grasped, rejected, and vainly grasped again their frail carnal ideal.

They felt that everything was fleeting, that everything wore out, that everything that was not dead would die, and that even the illusory ties holding them together would not endure. Their sadness did not bring them together. On the contrary, They were separated by all the force of their two sorrows. To suffer together, alas, what disunion!”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Hell

“I detected sarcoma." He put his finger on his neck. "Right here."

The other man nodded--his head seemed to be nodding continually--and muttered:

"Yes. There's no possibility of operating."

"Of course not," said the old specialist, his eyes shining with a kind of sinister irony. "There's only one thing that could remove it--the guillotine.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Hell

“He fell back. He had cried out so loud that even if there had been no breach in the wall, I should have heard him in my room. He voiced his whole dream, he threw it out passionately. This sincerity, which was indifferent to everything, had a definite significance which bruised my heart.

"Forgive me. Forgive me. It is almost a blasphemy. I could not help it."

He stopped. You felt his will-power making his face calm, his soul compelling him to silence, but his eyes seem to mourn.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Hell

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.