Henri Barbusse Quotes

My experience of the world is that things left to themselves don't get right.

Doubt yourself all you want, but you have to make choices in life and live with them.

It's hard to regret making the choice that you think is right.

This is my journey. If I fall, I have to pick myself up. If I'm not getting the playing time I want, it's up to me to figure out why.

I finally concluded that all failure was from a wobbling will rather than a wobbling wheel.

I just looked at the pattern of my life, decided I didn't like it, and changed.

You can put people's feet to the fire a bit just by reminding them that we're constantly creating our own history.

But again and again, we should reflect back to the darkness of the cocoon. In order to inspire ourselves forward, we must look back to see the contrast with the place we came from. You see, we cannot reject the world of the cocoon - which out which we may create a new cocoon. When we see the suffering that occured in the old cocoon, that inspires us to go forward in our journey of warriorship. It is a journey that is unfolding within us.

I confess some part of me thought, If only I'd stuck around, this is the sort of catastrophe I might have created.

Though I was standing in front of a mirror, I wasn't really seeing my reflection. I was seeing, very clearly, that—at the moment—I was all in the world that Eric could think of as his own. I had better not fail him.

It is not the courage to be that we must develop as much as the courage to become. We are responsible for our destiny. The meaning of life is not located in some hidden crevice in the womb of nature but is created by free persons, who are aware that they are responsible for their own futures and have the courage to take this project into their own hands.

Success requires no explanations. Failure permits no alibis.

Remember where you came from, where you're going, and why you created this mess you got yourself into in the first place.

You cannot be in Christ and be indifferent to the sin in your life.

I wondered how much of me would be left after tomorrow.

I would say my determination is way higher than my smartness.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

Fair play is primarily not blaming others for anything that is wrong with us.

You learn in life that the only person you can really correct and change is yourself.

Basically there are two types of people in the world: people who are confident because they know they have the ability to create, and then people who have been demoralised, who have no confidence in themselves because they have been told they have no creative ability, but must just take orders. The Establishment likes people who take no responsibility and cannot respect themselves.

Needing and getting don’t seem likely to match up any time soon... What needs doing is mine to do.

I don't have the delusion that I'm the best or have the right answer. Whenever someone is out there pissed at you or me, they don't even know you or I. What they are really pissed at is themselves. You might have total respect for them but they don't respect themselves.

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. They will practice Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn the literature of the whole world - all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls.

Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.

Don't ask the world to change....you change first.