Alfred De Vigny Quotes

Do you not see with your own eyes the chrysalis fact assume by degrees the wings of fiction?

Perform your long and heavy task with energy, treading the path to which Fate has been pleased to call you.

Observe this fact: in the history of mankind, every ruler who has lacked personal greatness has been forced to compensate for the deficiency by setting up the executioner at his right hand like a guardian angel

But it is the province of religion, of philosophy, of pure poetry only, to go beyond life, beyond time, into eternity.

The acts of the human race on the world's stage have doubtless a coherent unity, but the meaning of the vast tragedy enacted will be visible only to the eye of God, until the end, which will reveal it perhaps to the last man.

Hope is the biggest of our foolish things.

From this, without doubt, sprang the fable. Man created it thus, because it was not given him to see more than himself and nature, which surrounds him; but he created it true with a truth all its own.

History is a novel for which the people is the author.

What is a great life but a youthful intention carried out in maturity?

Every man has seen the wall that limits his mind.

Do you know that charming part of our country which has been called the garden of France - that spot where, amid verdant plains watered by wide streams, one inhales the purest air of heaven?

The human mind, I believe, cares for the True only in the general character of an epoch.

I admit that I myself am far from having a complete command of every topic I touch on, but my knowledge of my subject is always greater than the interest or the understanding of my auditors. You see, there is one very good thing about mankind; the mediocre masses make very few demands of the mediocrities of a higher order, submitting stupidly and cheerfully to their guidance

The loveliest Muse in the world does not feed her owner; these girls make fine mistresses but terrible wives

We shall find in our troubled hearts, where discord reigns, two needs which seem at variance, but which merge, as I think, in a common source - the love of the true, and the love of the fabulous.

Not one little fellow need fear that he will be forbidden to pluck his shining grape from the cluster of political Power, that fruit reputed to be so full of wealth and glory. Can't every gang become a club? and every club an assembly? an assembly, a convention? a convention, a senate? and isn't a senate meant to rule? And what senate ever ruled without a man to rule it? And what did it all require? – Daring! – Aha! Well said! – What! is that all it takes? – Yes, all! The ones who have arrived say so. – Then courage, numskulls, give tongue and run for it! – That's how it's done

A calm despair, without angry convulsions or reproaches directed at heaven, is the essence of wisdom.

Greatness is the dream of youth realized in old age.

Of late years (perhaps as a result of our political changes) art has borrowed from history more than ever.

Of what use were the arts if they were only the reproduction and the imitation of life?

I have a private theory, Sir, that there are no heroes and no monsters in this world. Only children should be allowed to use these words

Only silence is great; all else is weakness.

What is the use of theorizing as to wherein lies the charm that moves us?

The study of social progress is today not less needed in literature than is the analysis of the human heart.

Just as we descend into our consciences to judge of actions which our minds can not weigh, can we not also search in ourselves for the feeling which gives birth to forms of thought, always vague and cloudy?

Those intellectuals are our natural enemies; the only kind who are worth anything are the musicians and the dancers: they don't insult anybody with their performances, and they neither sing nor dance politics. So I like them; but don't let me hear a word about the rest

One is always a good master when one isn't the master

We have also set up for them an edifying project for a continuous mitigation of their own tyranny, ascribing to them an unshakeable faith in the triumph of virtue, as well as in the moral justification of their crimes. These are the theories of well-meaning children who see everything in black or white, dream of nothing but angels or demons, and have no idea of the incredible number of hypocritical masks of every color and shape and size which men use to conceal their features when they have passed the age of devotion to ideals and have abandoned themselves unrestrainedly to their egotistic desires

Silence alone is great; all else is weakness.

I think, then, that man, after having satisfied his first longing for facts, wanted something fuller - some grouping, some adaptation to his capacity and experience, of the links of this vast chain of events which his sight could not take in.