"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? Who will dare to tell everything, who will have the genius to see everything? I believe in a lofty form of poetry, in the work in which beauty will be mingled with beliefs. The more incapable of it I feel myself, the more I believe it to be possible. The sad splendour with which certain memories of mine overwhelm me, shows me that it is possible. Sometimes I myself have been sublime, I myself have been a masterpiece. Sometimes my visions have been mingled with a thrill of evidence so strong and so creative that the whole room has quivered with it like a forest, and there have been moments, in truth, when the silence cried out. But I have stolen all this, and I have profited by it, thanks to the shamelessness of the truth revealed. At the point in space in which, by accident, I found myself, I had only to open my eyes and to stretch out my mendicant hands to accomplish more than a dream, to accomplish almost a work."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henri_Barbusse
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Henri Barbusse
173 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Henri Barbusse →
Related Quotes
"...whatever our ignorance left to itself, and whatever the wounds that other human beings are, we ought to study ours…"
"This hunger for novelty — which makes sensuous love equally changeful and rapacious, which makes us seek the same emo…"
"Barbusse is a fine man, but unfortunately a poor performer. He allowed himself to be so completely taken in by the Bo…"
"There is nothing between the paradise dreamed of and the paradise lost. There is nothing, since we always want what w…"
"For some moments there had been outlined within me the tragic shape of the cry which at last came forth. It was a sor…"
"Two sensuous lovers are not two friends. Much rather are they two enemies, closely attached to each other. I know it,…"
"She sighs for the thought she has. She would like to be silent, but she must speak. "We don't love each other any mor…"
"I hear no more sounds. Marie has finished. She comes up beside me. We have sought each other and come together as oft…"
"All that we can remember is almost nothing. Memory is greater than we are, but memory is living and mortal as well."
"I take her hand, as I did before. I speak to her, rather timidly and at random: "Carnal love isn't the whole of love.…"