Alphonse de Lamartine Quotations

There is a woman at the begining of all great things.

To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic.

Sometimes, only one person is missing, and the whole world seems depopulated.

Experience is the only prophecy of wise men.

Brutality to an animal is cruelty to mankind - it is only the difference in the victim.

The more I see of the representatives of the people, the more I admire my dogs.

If one had but a single glance to give the world, one should gaze on Istanbul.

The people only understand what they can feel; the only orators that can affect them are those who move them.

Habit with it's iron sinews, clasps us and leads us day by day.

Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can; and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys.

Providence conceals itself in the details of human affairs, but becomes unveiled in the generalities of history.

Limited in his nature, infinite in his desire, man is a fallen god who remembers heaven.

A conscience without God is like a court without a judge.

Poets and heroes are of the same race, the latter do what the former conceive.

Private passions tire and exhaust themselves, public ones never.

Man hath no Heaven and Time's coast is chartless. He speeds; we pass away!

I am persuaded that if the brutes even--if the dog, the horse, the ox, the elephant, the bird, could speak, they would confess, that, at the bottom of their nature, their instincts, their sensations, their obtuse intelligence, assisted by organs less perfect than ours, there is a clouded, secret sentiment of this existence of a superior and primordial Being, from whom all emanates, and to whom all returns.

I say to this night: "Pass more slowly"; and the dawn will come to dispel the night.

Let us love the passing hour, let us hurry up and enjoy our time.

Chance often gives us that which we should not have presumed to ask.

Life is too short to spare an hour of it in the indulgence of this evil passion.

Let us savour the swift delights of the most beautiful of our days!

An artist should have more than two eyes.

Assassination makes only martyrs, not converts.

Barbarism recommences by the excess of civilization.

Sad is his lot, who, once at least in his life, has not been a poet.

The reason that women are so much more sociable than men is because they act more from the heart than the intellect.

Enthusiasm is the intoxication of earnestness.

Esteem incites friendship, but not love; the former is the twin brother of Reverence; the latter is the child of Equality.

A woman's strength is most potent when robed in gentleness.

History is neither more nor less than biography on a large scale.

The impartiality of history is not that of the mirror, which merely reflects objects, but of the judge, who sees, listens, and decides.

Ink is the transcript of thought.

Man, it seems, is not able to bear the languid rest on Nature's bosom, and when the trumpet sounds the signal of danger, he hastens to join his comrades, no matter what the cause that calls him to arms. He rushes into the thickest of the fight, and amid the uproar of the battle regains confidence in himself and his powers.

But Nature too, shakes off her sleep today; By May's mild sun we see reviv'd her frame, Around my window Venus' birds proclaim, The month most cherish'd backwards bends his way!

The attractiveness that exists to man in the very helplessness of woman is scarcely realized.

Republicanism and ignorance are in bitter antagonism.

At twenty every one is republican.

The People will not allow themselves to be changed into hogs by the Circes of Atheism. Their souls will flash indignation against their transformers. A day will come when they will see that they are impoverished under the pretext of being enriched; that, when they are robbed of their souls and of God, both their titles to liberty are stolen from them.

Death, with funereal shades in vain surrounds me, My reason through his darkness seeth light: 'Tis the last step which brings me close to Thee: 'Tis the veil falling, 'twixt Thy face and mine.

Shall not this bygone Eden that we knew In our Eternal Life have shape and hue? For where Time is not shall not all Time be? In that calm breast whereto our souls are cleaving Shall we not find our loved ones beyond grieving About the hearth-stone of Eternity?

Soul of the universe, Sire, God, Creator, Lord, I believe in Thee, 'neath all these names: And without having need to hear thy word, In the sky's brow my glorious creed I trace.

What mortal is there, over whose first joys and happiness does not break some storm, dispelling with its icy breath his fanciful illusions, and shattering his altar?

What is our life but a succession of preludes to that unknown song whose first solemn note is sounded by death?

All nature is the temple; earth the altar.

And when night, guiding her bright train of stars, Throws o'er the sleeping world her gloomy veil, Lonely amidst the desert and the darkness, Musing upon the night's calm majesty; Wrapt up in quietness, with shade and silence, My soul more closely worshippeth Thy presence; With an internal day I feel enlighten'd, And hear a voice, which biddeth me to hope.

Utopias are often just premature truths.

We are earth's children, and life is the same in sap as in blood; all that the earth, our mother, feels and expresses to the eye by her form and aspect, in melancholy or in splendor, finds an echo within us.

He, who can create, abhors destruction.

Too much I've seen, and felt, and lov'd in life, Living I come to seek Lethaean calm; Let me, fair scenes! forget all worldly strife, Oblivion solely is my bosom's balm.

Hence life, as through a cloud, for me I see Vanish, and to the past's dark shade 'tis chas'd; As a grand image love remains to me-- Sole remnant of a dream, by morn effac'd.

I love the people because I believe in God. For, if I did not believe in God, what would the people be to me? I should enjoy at ease that lucky throw of the dice, which chance had turned up for me, the day of my birth; and, with a secret, savage joy, I should say, "So much the worse for the losers!--the world is a lottery. Woe to the conquered!

Joy is a flame which association alone can keep alive, and which goes out unless communicated.

Mystery hovers over all things here below.

Photography is better than art. It is a solar phenomenon in which the artist collaborates with the sun.

All our tastes are but reminiscences.

After his blood, that which a man can next give out of himself is a tear.

Time is a great ocean which, like the other ocean, overflows with our remains.

Treason, which begins by being cautious, ends by betraying itself.

Unanimity is the mistress of strength.

Virginity is the poetry, not the reality, of life.

Civil wars leave nothing but tombs.

The death of a man's wife is like cutting down an ancient oak that has long shaded the family mansion. Henceforth the glare of the world, with its cares and vicissitudes falls upon the old widower's heart, and there is nothing to break their force, or shield him from the full weight of misfortune. It is as if his right hand were withered; as if one wing of his angel was broken, and every movement that he made brought him to the ground.

Men are misers, and women prodigal, in affection.

Nature has given women two painful but heavenly gifts, which distinguish them, and often raise them above human nature,--compassion and enthusiasm. By compassion, they devote themselves; by enthusiasm they exalt themselves.

Eternity is so certain and so terrible that a thousand lives would not suffice to prepare for it.

It is in the habits of lawyers that every accusation appears insufficient if they do not exaggerate it even to calumny; it is thus that justice itself loses its sanctity and its respect amongst men.

France is revolutionary or she is nothing at all. The revolution of1789 is her political religion.

Private passions grow tired and wear themselves out; political passions, never.

Yet, in these autumn days when Nature expires, Here, in these veiled scenes, I find more attractions; It is a friend's sad goodbye; it is the last smile From lips that death is going to close forever!

God - but a word invoked to explain the world.

It is because of the servility of photography that I am fundamentally contemptuous of this chance invention which will never be an art but which plagiarizes nature by means of optics. (1848)

Thou makest the man, O Sorrow!--yes, the whole man,--as the crucible gold.

Let us enjoy the fugitive hour. Man has no harbor, time has no shore; it rushes on, and carries us with it.

The greatness of a popular character is less according to the ratio of his genius than the sympathy he shows with the prejudices and even the absurdities of his time. Fanatics do not select the cleverest but the most fanatical leaders as was evidenced in the choice of Robespierre by the French Jacobins, and in that of Cromwell by the English Puritans.

It is the qualities of the heart, not those of the face, that should attract us in women, because the former are durable, the latter transitory. So lovable women, like roses, retain their sweetness long after they have lost their beauty.

Radicalism is but the desperation of logic.

Religions are not proved, are not demonstrated, are not established, are not overthrown by logic! They are of all the mysteries of nature and the human mind, the most mysterious and most inexplicable; they are of instinct and not of reason.

Modesty and dew love the shade.

Exquisite beauty resides rather in the female form than face, where it is also more lasting.

True greatness is sovereign wisdom. We are never deceived by our virtues.

Enthusiasm springs from the imagination, and self-sacrifice from the heart. Women are, therefore, more naturally heroic than men. All nations have in their annals some of these miracles of patriotism, of which woman is the instrument in the hands of God.

Women have much more heart and much more imagination than men; hence, fancy often allures them.

Poetry is the morning dream of great minds.

Philosophy is the rational expression of genius.

Poetry has been the guardian angel of humanity in all ages.

Love of country produces among men such examples as Cincinnatus, Alfred, Washington--pure, unselfish, symmetrical; among women, Vittoria Colonna, Madame Roland, Charlotte Corday, Jeanne Darc--romantic, devoted, marvelous.

Good manners require space and time.

The loss of a mother is always keenly felt, even if her health be such as to incapacitate her from taking an active part in the care of the family. She is the sweet rallying-point for affection, obedience, and a thousand tendernesses. Dreary the blank when she is withdrawn!

When a dog is in your life, there is always a reason to laugh.

I am the fellow citizen of every being that thinks; my country is Truth.

Newspapers will ultimately engross all literature.

...to kill animals for the purpose of feeding on their flesh is one of the most deplorable and shameful infirmities of the human state

True love is the ripe fruit of a lifetime.

If they say "you have your last chance to look at the world", I wish that look would from Çamlıca of Istanbul.

There is a name hidden in the shadow of my soul, where I read it night and day and no other eye sees it.

Ah! let us love, my Love, for Time is heartless, Be happy while you may!

History teaches everything, even the future.

Man, man, is thy brother, and thy father is God.

We cannot have two hearts, one for the animals and one for men. In cruelty towards the former and cruelty to the latter there is no difference but in the victim.