Wnp Barbellion Quotes

Youth is an intoxication without wine, someone says. Life is an intoxication. The only sober man is the melancholiac, who, disenchanted, looks at life, sees it as it really is, and cuts his throat. If this be so, I want to be very drunk. The great thing is to live, to clutch at our existence and race away with it in some great and enthralling pursuit. Above all, I must beware of all ultimate questions- they are too maddeningly unanswerable- let me eschew philosophy and burn Omar.

An appetite for knowledge is apt to rush one off one's feet, like any other appetite if not curbed. I often stand in the in the centre of the Library here and think despairingly how impossible it is ever to become possessed of all the wealth of facts and ideas contained in the books surrounding me on every hand.

I waste much time gaping and wondering. During a walk or in a book or in the middle of an embrace, suddenly I awake to a stark amazement at everything. The bare fact of existence paralyses me- holds my mind in mortmain. To be alive is so incredible that all I do is to lie still and merely breathe- like an infant on its back in a cot. It is impossible to be interested in anything in particular while overhead the sun shines or underneath my feet grows a single blade of grass.

I have reveled in my littleness and irresponsibility. It has relieved me of the harassing desire to live, I feel content to live dangerously, indifferent to my fate; I have discovered I am a fly, that we are all flies, that nothing matters. It’s a great load off my life, for I don’t mind being such a micro-organism—to me the honour is sufficient of belonging to the universe—such a great universe, so grand a scheme of things. Not even Death can rob me of that honour. For nothing can alter the fact that I have lived; I have been I, if for ever so short a time. And when I am dead, the matter which composes my body is indestructible—and eternal, so that come what may to my “Soul,” my dust will always be going on, each separate atom of me playing its separate part—I shall still have some sort of a finger in the Pie. When I am dead, you can boil me, burn me, drown me, scatter me—but you cannot destroy me: my little atoms would merely deride such heavy vengeance. Death can do no more than kill you.

To forget the past so easily seems scarcely loyal to oneself. I am so selfishly absorbed in my present self that I have grown not to care a damn about that ever increasing collection of past selves- those dear, dead gentlemen who one after the other have tenanted the temple of this flesh and handed on the torch of my life and personal identity before creeping away silently and modestly to rest.

Civilisation and top hats bore me.

Suffering does not only insulate. It drops its victim in an ocean desert where he sees men as distant ships passing. I not only feel alone, but very far away from you all.

When I feel ill, cinema pictures of the circumstances of my death flit across my mind's eye. I cannot prevent them. I consider the nature of the disease and all I said before I died- something heroic, of course!

Sometimes I think I am going mad. I live for days in the mystery and tears of things so that the commonest object, the most familiar face- even my own- become ghostly, unreal, enigmatic. I get into an attitude of almost total scepticism, nescience, solipsism, in a world of dumb, sphinx-like things that cannot explain themselves. The discovery of how I am situated- a sentient being on a globe in space overshadows me. I wish I were just nothing.

My darling sweetheart, you ask me why I love you. I do not know. All I know is that I do love you, and beyond measure. Why do you love me? Surely a more inscrutable problem? You do not know. No one ever knows. ‘The heart has its reasons which the reason knows not of.’ We love in obedience to a powerful gravitation of our beings, and then try to explain it by recapitulating one another’s character just as a man forms his opinions first and then thinks out reasons in support. What delights me is to recall that our love has evolved. It did not suddenly spring into existence like some beautiful sprite. It developed slowly to perfection. It was forged in the white heat of our experiences. That is why it will always remain.

The porter spends his days in the Library keeping strict vigil over this catacomb of books, passing along between the shelves and yet never paying heed to the almost audible susurrus of desire- the desire every book has to be taken down and read, to live, to come into being in somebody's mind. He even hands the volumes over the counter, seeks them out in their proper places or returns them there without once realising that a Book is a Person and not a Thing.

As for me, I am proud of my close kinship with other animals. I take a jealous pride in my Simian ancestry. I like to think that I was once a magnificent hairy fellow living in the trees and that my frame has come down through geological time via sea jelly and worms and Amphioxus, Fish, Dinosaurs, and Apes. Who would exchange these for the pallid couple in the Garden of Eden?

It is jolly to be regarded as a wicked, libidinous youth by an aged maiden Aunt.

...poverty proved greater than vanity...

Let all the powers of the world and the Devil attack me, yet I will win in the end—though the conquest may very well be one which no one but myself will view.

It is best for a man to try to be both poet and naturalist — not to be too much of a naturalist and so overlook the beauty of things, or too much of a poet and so fail to understand them or even perceive those hidden beauties only revealed by close observation.

When the sun grew too hot we went into the wood where waves of Bluebells dashed around the foot of the Oak in front of us... I never knew before, the delight of offering oneself up; I even longed for some self sacrifice, to have to give up something for her sake. It intoxicated me to think I was making another happy...

me parece honor suficiente pertenecer al universo; a un universo tan grande, a un sistema tan grandioso. Ni siquiera la Muerte puede despojarme de semejante honor. Porque nada puede alterar el hecho de que he vivido; yo he sido yo, aunque fuera por poco tiempo. Y cuando esté muerto, la materia que compone mi cuerpo será indestructible –y eterna, suceda lo que suceda con mi «alma»–, mi polvo siempre estará aquí, cada átomo mío tendrá su papel independiente, todavía tendré vela en ese entierro. Cuando esté muerto, podréis hervirme, quemarme, tirarme al agua, esparcirme, pero no podréis destruirme: mis atomitos se burlarían de semejante venganza. La muerte sólo puede matarnos.

Me gusta la manera en que una bella melodía revolotea por la orquesta y sus diversos componentes como un hermoso pájaro.

Aunque sea una gran hazaña añadir algo, aunque sólo sea una pizca, a la suma del conocimiento humano, más grande todavía es añadir un pensamiento. Para un hombre, es mejor intentar ser a la vez poeta y naturalista que ser demasiado naturalista y pasar por alto la belleza de las cosas, o demasiado poeta y no entenderlas o no poder ver siquiera las bellezas escondidas que sólo se revelan tras una observación atenta.

Me gusta pensar que en otro tiempo fui un magnífico ejemplar peludo que vivía en los árboles y que mi cuerpo procede, a lo largo de un tiempo geológico, de la medusa, los gusanos y anfioxos, peces, dinosaurios y monos. ¿Quién querría cambiar eso por la pálida pareja del Jardín del Edén?

La vida es una borrachera. El único hombre sobrio es el melancólico que, desencantado, contempla la vida, ve cómo es y se corta el gaznate. Si es así, quiero estar muy borracho. Lo importante es vivir, agarrarnos a nuestra existencia y salir corriendo con ella en una búsqueda intensa y apasionante.

Life is an intoxication. The only sober man is the melancholiac, who, disenchanted, looks at life, sees it as it really is, and cuts his throat.

What splendid people we humans are ! If there be no loving God to watch us, it's a pity for His sake as much as for our own.

All suffering has limits beyond which the heart is insensible. We are no more appalled at the death of ten million men than at that of ten thousand, or, indeed if it be under our eyes, ten or one.

My chief discovery in sickness and misfortune is the callousness of people to our case—not from hard-heartedness (everyone is kind), but from absence of sympathetic imagination. People don’t know the horrors and they can’t imagine them—perhaps they are unimaginable. You will notice how suicides time and again in farewell notes to their closest and dearest have the same refrain, ‘ I don’t believe even you can realise all I suffer.’ Poor devil ! of course not. Beyond a certain point, suffering must be borne alone, and so must extreme joy. Ah ! we are lonely barks.

It is best for a man to try to be both poet and naturalist—not to be too much of a naturalist and so overlook the beauty of things, or too much of a poet and so fail to understand them or even perceive those hidden beauties only revealed by close observation.

An appetite for knowledge is apt to rush one off one's feet, like any other appetite if not curbed.

Suppose the hellfire of the orthodox really existed! We have no assurance that it does not! It seems incredible, but many incredible things are true. We do not know that God is not as cruel as a Spanish inquisitor. Suppose, then, He is! If, after Death, we wicked ones were shovelled into a furnace of fire- we should have to burn. There would be no redress. It would simply be the Divine Order of things. It is outrageous that we should be so helpless and so dependent on any one- even God.

Her journal is my journal. All mine is stale reading now. She has written down all my thoughts and forestalled me! Already I have found some heart-rending parallels. To think I am only a replica: how humiliating for a human being to find himself merely a duplicate of another.

«La paciencia y la desgracia, el valor y la muerte, la resignación y lo inevitable tienden a aparecer juntos. Por lo general, la indiferencia ante la vida surge en el momento en que es imposible conservarla»… ¡Qué cínico parece!

El único fracaso verdadero es aquel en que la víctima se queda sin brío, aturdida, abatida, rodeada de oscuridad y, en su interior, un cuchillo le corta lenta e implacablemente las cuerdas del corazón.

«No esperes mucho: no temas nada»,

W.N.P Barbellion en "El diario de un hombre decepcionado" el 26 de Septiembre de 1914: Mi vida ha sido una lucha continua contra la mala salud y la ambición, y no he conseguido dominar ninguna de las dos. Intento decirme que esta maldita mala salud no afectará a mi carrera. Azoto mi voluntad con la esperanza de ganar al final. Sin embargo, en el fondo sé que es muy improbable que viva lo suficiente para realizarme. Durante mucho tiempo no he tenido otra esperanza que convencer a los demás de lo que podría haber hecho de haber vivido suficiente. Eso ya sería algo. Pero ni siquiera tengo mucho tiempo para eso. Jamás he vivido con sensación de seguridad. Nunca me he sentido instalado permanentemente en esta vida, no soy más que un difuso sustituto, un espectro, un festón de niebla que desaparecerá en cualquier momento.

In the coppice, leaves were quietly and majestically floating earthwards in the pomp of death.