Alfred De Musset Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 76 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Alfred De Musset.
Famous Quotes By Alfred De Musset
Is is true that dictators never dream because they can change their smallest fantasies into realities if they want to? — Alfred De Musset
Hast thou found out, Voltaire, that it is bliss to die,
And does thy hideous smile over thy bleached bones fly? — Alfred De Musset
He, that same man, after having abandoned her, finds her after a night of orgie, pale and leaden, forever lost, with hunger on her lips and prostitution in her heart. — Alfred De Musset
The apartments of the rich are cabinets of curiosities: a conglomeration of classical antiquity, gothic, renaissance; Louis XIII ... Something from every century but our own, a predicament that has arisen in no other period ... so that we seem to be subsisting on the ruins of the past, as if the end of the world were near. — Alfred De Musset
You're like a lighthouse shining beside the sea of humanity, motionless: all you can see is your own reflection in the water. You're alone, so you think it's a vast, magnificent panorama. You haven't sounded the depths. You simply believe in the beauty of God's creation. But I have spent all this time in the water, diving deep into the howling ocean of life, deeper than anyone. While you were admiring the surface, I saw the shipwrecks, the drowned bodies, the monsters of the deep — Alfred De Musset
Perfection does not exist; to understand it is the triumph of human intelligence; to expect to possess it is the most dangerous kind of madness. — Alfred De Musset
I deeply wished I could make the stars all come down and breathe them; disappear in them — Alfred De Musset
The blood of my motherland waters a magic plant that cures all ills. That plant is art, and sometimes art needs corruption as a kind of fertilizer — Alfred De Musset
What I need is a woman who is something, anything: either very beautiful or very kind or in the last resort very wicked; very witty or very stupid, but something. — Alfred De Musset
If love is a play, this play, as old as the world, fiasco or not, it is, all in all, the least bad thing that has so far been found. The roles are trite, I admit, but if the play had no value the whole universe wouldn't know it by heart — Alfred De Musset
My heart, still full of her,
traveled over her face, and found her there no more ...
I had thought to myself that a woman unknown
had adopted by chance that voice and those eyes
and I let the chilly statue pass
looking athe skies — Alfred De Musset
A lively retrospect summons back to us once more our youth, with vivid reflex of its early joys and unstained pleasures. — Alfred De Musset
If you are weak, dependent upon others, inclined to allow yourself to be dominated by opinion, to take root wherever you see a little soil, make for yourself a shield that will resist everything, for if you yield to your weaker nature you will not grow, you will dry up like a dead plant, and you will bear neither fruit nor flowers. The sap of your life will dissipate into the formation of a useless bark; all your actions will be as colorless as the leaves of the willow; you will have no tears to water you, but those from your own eyes, to nourish you, no heart but your own. — Alfred De Musset
I could not clearly distinguish what was passing in my head; it seemed to me that I was under the influence of a horrible dream and that I had but to awake to find myself cured; at times it seemed that my entire life had been a dream, ridiculous and childish, the falseness of which had just been disclosed. — Alfred De Musset
The heart that once has been your shrine for other loves is too divine — Alfred De Musset
Disgrace is the synonym of discovery. — Alfred De Musset
Man is a pupil, pain is his teacher. — Alfred De Musset
Happiness may have but one night, as glory but one day. — Alfred De Musset
Your name, merely your name, floods my brain to a point of sweet disgust. — Alfred De Musset
Life is a sleep, love is a dream; and you have lived if you have loved. — Alfred De Musset
Things they don't understand always cause a sensation among the English. — Alfred De Musset
I cannot help it - in spite of myself, infinity torments me. — Alfred De Musset
There is no worse sorrow than remembering happiness in the day of sorrow. — Alfred De Musset
The most despairing songs are the most beautiful, and I know some immortal ones that are pure tears. — Alfred De Musset
Oh! my friend, when you feel bursting on your lips the vow of eternal love, do not be afraid to yield, but do not confound wine with intoxication; do not think the cup divine because the draft is of celestial flavor; do not be astonished to find it broken and empty in the evening. — Alfred De Musset
During the wars of the Empire, while husbands and brothers were in Germany, anxious mothers gave birth to an ardent, pale, and neurotic generation. Conceived between battles, reared amid the noises of war, thousands of children looked about them with dull eyes while testing their limp muscles. From time to time their blood-stained fathers would appear, raise them to their gold-laced bosoms, then place them on the ground and remount their horses. — Alfred De Musset
One must not trifle with love. — Alfred De Musset
Taxes are a universal burden in moral as well as in civil life. There is not a pleasure, social or otherwise, which is not assessed by fate at its full value! — Alfred De Musset
The life of a devotee is a crusade of which the heart is the Holy Land. — Alfred De Musset
Repartee is altogether a natural endowment, and is the lightning of the mind. — Alfred De Musset
Few persons enjoy real liberty; we are all slaves to ideas or habits. — Alfred De Musset
It was one of those somber evenings when the sighing of the wind resembles the moans of a dying man; a storm was brewing, and between the splashes of rain on the windows there was the silence of death. All nature suffers in such moments; the trees writhe in pain and twist their heads; the birds of the fields cower under the bushes; the streets of cities are deserted. — Alfred De Musset
What a frightful weapon is human thought! It is our defense and our safeguard, the most precious gift that God has made us. It is ours and it obeys us; we may launch it forth into space, but, once outside of our feeble brains, it is gone; we can no longer control it. — Alfred De Musset
The mouth keeps silent to hear the heart speak. — Alfred De Musset
[I]f you are truly a man, sure of yourself and confident of your strength, you may taste of life without fear and without reserve; you may be sad or joyous, deceived or respected; but be sure you are loved, for what matters the rest? — Alfred De Musset
Alas, everything that men say to one another is alike; the ideas they exchange are almost always the same, in their conversation. But inside all those isolated machines, what hidden recesses, what secret compartments! It is an entire world that each one carries within him, an unknown world that is born and dies in silence! What solitudes all these human bodies are! — Alfred De Musset
life is a deep sleep of which love is the dream — Alfred De Musset
But one loves, and when one is on the brink of death, one turns around to look backward, and one says to oneself: I have often suffered, I have sometimes been wrong, but I have loved. — Alfred De Musset
In my flowery dreams there's always you. I do not regret it one bit. — Alfred De Musset
Know that there is often hidden in us a dormant poet, always young and alive. — Alfred De Musset
The costliest women are the ones who cost nothing. — Alfred De Musset
The most disagreeable thing that your worst enemy says to your face does not approach what your best friends say behind your back. — Alfred De Musset
As all the perfumes of the vanished dayRise from the earth still moistened with the dewSo from my chastened soul beneath thy rayOld love is born anew. — Alfred De Musset
I don't know where my road is going, but I know that I walk better when I hold your hand. — Alfred De Musset
It is unfortunately true that there is in blasphemy a certain outlet which solaces the burdened heart. When an atheist, drawing his watch, gave God a quarter of an hour in which to strike him dead, it is certain that it was a quarter of an hour of wrath and of atrocious joy. It was the paroxysm of despair, a nameless appeal to all celestial powers; it was a poor, wretched creature squirming under the foot that was crushing him; it was a loud cry of pain. Who knows? In the eyes of Him who sees all things, it was perhaps a prayer. — Alfred De Musset
The return makes one love the farewell. — Alfred De Musset
The fumes of wine fermented in my head; it was one of those moments of intoxication when all that ones sees and hears, speaks to one of the adored ... One would willingly embrace all who smile, and one feels that he is brother of all who live. — Alfred De Musset
Then came upon a world in ruins an anxious youth. The children were drops of burning blood which had inundated the earth; they were born in the bosom of war, for war. For fifteen years they had dreamed of the snows of Moscow and of the sun of the Pyramids. — Alfred De Musset
Romanticism is the abuse of adjectives — Alfred De Musset
Look at the sun! It's dry, it's dead, it needs a drink, it wants blood! And I'll give it blood! — Alfred De Musset
Doubt, if you will, the being who loves you,
Woman or dog, but never doubt love itself. — Alfred De Musset
With a kiss let us set out for an unknown world. — Alfred De Musset
The soft contralto notes of a woman's voice are born in the immediate region of the heart. — Alfred De Musset
Take time as it comes, the wind as it blows, woman as she is. — Alfred De Musset
Christianity ruined emperors, but saved peoples. — Alfred De Musset
Great artists have no country. — Alfred De Musset
In love matters; keep your pen from paper. — Alfred De Musset
Become corrupt, corrupt, and you will cease to suffer! This has been the cry of all cities to man ... — Alfred De Musset
Nothing is a sin when you obey the orders of a priest — Alfred De Musset
Take love as a sober man takes wine; do not become a drunkard. If your mistress is sincere and faithful, love her for that; but if she is not, if she is merely young and beautiful, love her for that; if she is agreeable and spirituelle, love her for that; if she is none of these things but merely loves you, love her for that. Love does not come to us every day. — Alfred De Musset
Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content. — Alfred De Musset
All men are liars, fickle, chatterers, hypocrites, proud or cowardly, despicable, sensual ; all women faithless, tricky, vain, inquisitive, and depraved. The world is only a bottomless cesspool, where the most shapeless sea-beasts climb and writhe on mountains of slime. But there is in the world a thing holy and sublime - the union of two of these beings, imperfect and frightful as they are. One is often deceived in love, often wounded, often unhappy ; but one loves, and on the brink of the grave one turns to look back and says : I have suffered often, sometimes I have been mistaken, but I have loved. It is I who have lived, and not a spurious being bred of my pride and my sorrow — Alfred De Musset
All men are liars, inconstant, hollow, talkative, hypocrites, proud and cowards, contemptible and sensual; all woman are perfidious, artificial, vain, curious and depraved; the world is nothing but a bottomless sewer where the most shapeless seals crawl and wriggle on mountains of muck; but there one single thing in this world, saint and sublime, it's the union of these two beings so imperfect and dreadful. We are often deceived in love, often wounded and often miserable; but we love, and when we are on of the verge of the grave, we look back, and we say: I often suffered, I erred sometimes: but I loved. It is me who lived and not a factitious being created by my pride and my boredom. — Alfred De Musset
The glass I drink from is not large, but at least it is my own. — Alfred De Musset
A happy memory is perhaps on this earth truer than happiness itself. — Alfred De Musset
Vanity and dignity are incompatible with each other; vain women are almost sure to be vulnerable. — Alfred De Musset