Henri Charriere Quotes & Sayings

We have too much technological
progress, life is too hectic, and our society has only one goal: to invent
still more technological marvels to make life even easier and better.
The craving for every new scientific discovery breeds a hunger for
greater comfort and the constant struggle to achieve it. All that kills the
soul, kills compassion, understanding, nobility. It leaves no time for
caring what happens to other people, least of all criminals. Even the
officials in Venezuela's remote areas are better for they're also
concerned with public peace. It gives them many headaches, but they
seem to believe that bringing about a man's salvation is worth the
effort. I find that magnificent. — Henri Charriere

Those who haven't been exposed to the hypocrisies of a civilized education react to things 'naturally', as they happen. It is in the here and now that they are either happy or unhappy, joyful or sad, interested or indifferent. — Henri Charriere

Life is based on comparisons — Henri Charriere

This was 1941 and I'd been in prison eleven years. I was thirty-five. I'd spent the best years of my life either in a cell or in a black-hole. I'd only had seven months of total freedom with my Indian tribe. The children my Indian wives must have had by me would be eight years old now. How terrible! How quickly the time had flashed by! But a backward glance showed all these hours and minutes studding my calvary as terribly long, and each one of them hard to bear. — Henri Charriere

The tears in my pus-filled eyes became a thousand little crystals of ever color. Like stained-glass windows, I thought. God is with you today, Papi! In the midst of nature's monstrous elements, in the wind, the immenseness of the sea, the depth of the waves, the imposing green roof of the bush, you feel your own infinitesimal smallness, and perhaps it's here, without looking for Him, that you find God, that you touch Him with your finger. I had sensed Him at night during the thousands of hours I had spent buried alive in dank dungeons without a ray of sun; I touched Him today in a sun that would devour everything too weak to resist it. I touched God, I felt Him around me, inside me. He even whispered in my ear: You will suffer; you will suffer more. But this time I am on your side. You will be free. You will, I promise you. — Henri Charriere

Forgive those who have made you suffer. — Henri Charriere

It was worth having made this break for the people, the human beings it had brought me into contact with. Although it had failed, my escape had been a victory, merely by having enriched my heart with the friendship of these wonderful people. No, I was not sorry. I had done it. — Henri Charriere

I must prove that I can be, that I am and will be, a normal person. Perhaps no better, but certainly no worse than the rest. — Henri Charriere

Sometimes God wills for one of his children to experience human wickedness so that he will emerge stronger and nobler than ever. — Henri Charriere

You want me to be killed? Why are you taking away my knife? I guess you realize you're sending me to my grave? — Henri Charriere

Sleep in peace, you members of the jury who condemned me to this place; sleep in peace, — Henri Charriere

Where there is life, there is hope. — Henri Charriere

I've known this a long time, because when Napoleon III created the bagnes and was asked: "But who will guard these bandits?" he answered: "Worse bandits. — Henri Charriere

What should we do? I was beginning to understand a few words of Spanish: to escape, fugar; prisoner, preso; to kill, matar; chain, cadena; handcuffs, esposas; man, hombre; woman, mujer. — Henri Charriere

the butterflies that had just hatched hurried into the light to find love as — Henri Charriere

When you're suffering, you're oversensitive to everything. — Henri Charriere