“These are not soldiers, these are men. They are notadventurers or warriors, designed for human butchery - as butchers or cattle. They are the ploughmen or workers that one recognizes even in their uniforms. They are uprooted civilians. They are ready, waiting for the signal for death or murder, but when you examine their faces between the vertical ranks of bayonets, they are nothing but men.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Under Fire
“Déjà, le mois de septembre, lendemain d'août et veille d'octobre et qui est par sa situation le plus émouvant des mois parsème les beaux jours de quelques fins avertissements. Déjà, on comprend ces feuilles mortes qui courent sur les pierres plates comme une bande de moineaux.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Under Fire
“An aeroplane booms overhead. We follow its evolutions with our faces skyward, our necks twisted, our eyes watering at the piercing brightness of the sky. Lamuse declares to me, when we have brought our gaze back to earth, “Those machines ’ll never become practical, never.”
“How can you say that? Look at the progress they’ve made already, and the speed of it.”
“Yes, but they’ll stop there. They’ll never do any better, never.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Under Fire
“Paradis: «Sì, questa è la guerra», ripete con voce remota, distante. «Nient’altro che questo».
Capisco benissimo il senso delle sue parole. «Più delle cariche che sembrano parate, più delle battaglie visibili dispiegate come stendardi, più ancora dei corpo a corpo dove ci si dibatte e si grida, questa guerra è spaventosa e sovrumana fatica, è acqua fino al ventre, è fango, escrementi e infame sporcizia. È facce ammuffite e carni a brandelli, è cadaveri che non sembrano più nemmeno cadaveri, mentre galleggiano sulla terra famelica. È tutto questo, è questa miserabile monotonia interrotta da momenti drammatici; è questa, e non la baionetta scintillante come fosse d’argento, né il chicchirichì della tromba al sorgere del sole!»”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Under Fire
“Andiamo avanti, non sappiamo dove. Non sappiamo niente, tranne che il cielo e la terra stanno per confondersi nel medesimo abisso.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Under Fire
“Quando si viene a sapere, o la si vede di persona, della morte di uno di quelli che facevano la guerra accanto a te e che vivevano esattamente alla tua stessa maniera, prima ancora di capire provi un colpo al cuore. È come se d’un tratto venissi a sapere che tu stesso sei stato annientato. Il dolore arriva solo dopo un po’.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Under Fire
“«Se anche ce ne fossero, […] sarebbe da veri criminali esaltare gli aspetti belli della guerra!»”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Under Fire
“In a state of war, one is always waiting. We have become waiting-machines. For the moment it is food we are waiting for. Then it will be the post. But each in its turn. When we have done with dinner we will think about the letters. After that, we shall set ourselves to wait for something else.”
― Henri Barbusse, quote from Under Fire
Henri Barbusse
Born place: in Asnières-sur-Seine, France
Born date May 17, 1873
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“If sympathy is all that human beings need, then the Cross of Christ is an absurdity and there is absolutely no need for it. What the world needs is not "a little bit of love," but major surgery. If you think you are helping lost people with your sympathy and understanding, you are a traitor to Jesus Christ. You must have a right-standing relationship with Him yourself, and pour your life out in helping others in His way— not in a human way that ignores God. ”
― Oswald Chambers, quote from My Utmost for His Highest
“When you love someone, you can't lie to them. It hurts to much. It's a deception that goes too deep.”
― Abbi Glines, quote from Just for Now
“Question: would I do it the same way all over again? Absolutely - because I learned something along the way. Most people don't learn things along
the way. Or if they do, they conveniently forget those things when it suits their need. Most people, given a second chance, fuck it up completely. It's
one of those laws of the universe that you can't shake. People, I have noticed, only seem to learn once they get their third chance - after losing and
wasting vast sums of time, money, youth, and energy you name it. But still they learn, which is the better thing in the end.”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Girlfriend in a Coma
“And this, she saw, her dream had done. She had built against that fear a vision of power not wholly selfish—power to protect not only herself, but others. And that vision—however partial it had been in those days—was worth following. For it led not away from the fear, as a dream of rule might do, but back into it. The pattern of her life—as she saw it then, clear and far away and painted in bright colors—the pattern of her life was like an intricate song, or the way the Kuakgan talked of the grove's interlacing trees. There below were the dream's roots, tangled in fear and despair, nourished in the death of friends, the bones of the strong, the blood of the living, and there high above were the dream's images, bright in the sun like banners or the flowering trees of spring. And to be that banner, or that flowering branch, meant being nourished by the same fears: meant encompassing them, not rejecting them.”
― Elizabeth Moon, quote from The Deed of Paksenarrion
“sometimes what you miss the most is the way a loved one made you feel about yourself.”
― Mitch Albom, quote from The First Phone Call from Heaven
The Ladies' Paradise
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I, ZombieBookQuoters 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.
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