The Journal of a Disappointed Man & A Last Diary Quotes

“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.”
― W.N.P. Barbellion, The Journal of a Disappointed Man & A Last Diary

“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.”
― W.N.P. Barbellion, The Journal of a Disappointed Man & A Last Diary

“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.”
― W.N.P. Barbellion, The Journal of a Disappointed Man & A Last Diary

“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.”
― W.N.P. Barbellion, The Journal of a Disappointed Man & A Last Diary

“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.”
― W.N.P. Barbellion, The Journal of a Disappointed Man & A Last Diary

“An appetite for knowledge is apt to rush one off one's feet, like any other appetite if not curbed.”
― W.N.P. Barbellion, The Journal of a Disappointed Man & A Last Diary

“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.”
― W.N.P. Barbellion, The Journal of a Disappointed Man & A Last Diary