Alphonse De Lamartine Quotes & Sayings

Before this century shall run out, journalism will be the whole press. Mankind will write their book day by day, hour by hour, page by page. Thought will spread abroad with the rapidity of light
instantly conceived, instantly written, instantly understood at the extremities of the earth. — Alphonse De Lamartine

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. — Alphonse De Lamartine

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! — Alphonse De Lamartine

Silence - the applause of real and durable impressions - was broken by no one; each respected in the other the thoughts he felt to be the same as his own. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Thou makest the man, O Sorrow!
yes, the whole man,
as the crucible gold. — Alphonse De Lamartine

History is neither more nor less than biography on a large scale. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Inspiration is solitary, never consecutive. — Alphonse De Lamartine

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

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

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. — Alphonse De Lamartine

The photographer will never replace the painter; one is a man, the other a machine. Let us compare them no longer. (1848) — Alphonse De Lamartine

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. — Alphonse De Lamartine

There is a woman at the beginning of all great things. — Alphonse De Lamartine

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. — Alphonse De Lamartine

If God is thy father, human beings are thy brothers and sisters. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Limited in his nature, infinite in his desires, man is a fallen god who remembers the heavens. — Alphonse De Lamartine

An artist should have more than two eyes. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Utopias are often just premature truths. — Alphonse De Lamartine

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

Let us love the passing hour, let us hurry up and enjoy our time. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Private passions tire and exhaust themselves, public ones never. — Alphonse De Lamartine

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. — Alphonse De Lamartine

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. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Love is the enchanted dawn of every heart. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Virginity is the poetry, not the reality, of life. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Chance often gives us that which we should not have presumed to ask. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Man is born barbarous
he is ransomed from the condition of beasts only by being cultivated. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Poetry has been the guardian angel of humanity in all ages. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Was in this way that the people of antiquity, when they had raised a temple on the site of one which had been torn down, always took care to introduce into the new building some of the materials, or at least a column, of the old one, in order to preserve something of the old and sacred in the modern, and in order that the souvenir, crude and worn, should have its worship and its influence over the heart, even among the master-pieces of the new sanctuary. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Grief and sadness knits two hearts in closer bonds that happiness ever can; and common sufferings are far stronger than common joys. — Alphonse De Lamartine

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. — Alphonse De Lamartine

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

A conscience without God is like a court without a judge. — Alphonse De Lamartine

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

Private passions grow tired and wear themselves out; political passions, never. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Civil wars leave nothing but tombs. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Man, man, is thy brother, and thy father is God. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Fiction is the microscope of truth. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Sometimes, only one person is missing, and the whole world seems depopulated. — Alphonse De Lamartine

My mother was convinced, and on this head I have retained her firm belief, that to kill animals for the purpose of feeding on their flesh is one of the most deplorable and shameful infirmities of the human state; that it is one of those curses cast upon man either by his fall, or by the obduracy of his own perversity. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Enthusiasm is the intoxication of earnestness. — Alphonse De Lamartine

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

God is only a word dreamed up to explain the world — Alphonse De Lamartine

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) — Alphonse De Lamartine

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. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Treason, which begins by being cautious, ends by betraying itself. — Alphonse De Lamartine

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! — Alphonse De Lamartine

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. — Alphonse De Lamartine

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

would seem as though language is the only predestination of man, and that he is created to bring it forth as his fruit. Man frets until he has given external expression to that which works within. Written language is like a mirror which it is necessary to have in order that man may know himself and be sure that he exists. So long as he does not see himself in his works he is not sure that he lives. The soul, like the body, has its ripe age. — Alphonse De Lamartine

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

Philosopher, orator, apostle, legislator, warrior, conqueror of ideas, restorer of rational dogmas, of a cult without images, the founder of twenty terrestrial empires and of one spiritual empire: that is MUHAMMAD. As regards all the standards by which human greatness may be measured, we may well ask IS THERE ANY MAN GREATER THAN HE? — Alphonse De Lamartine

Poetry is the morning dream of great minds. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Poets and heroes are of the same race, the latter do what the former conceive. — Alphonse De Lamartine

All our tastes are but reminiscences. — Alphonse De Lamartine

If greatness of purpose, smallness of means, and astonishing results are the three criteria of a human genius, who could dare compare any great man in history with Muhammad? — Alphonse De Lamartine

Barbarism recommences by the excess of civilization. — Alphonse De Lamartine

It is admirable to die the victim of one's faith; it is sad to die the dupe of one's ambition. — Alphonse De Lamartine

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! — Alphonse De Lamartine

Philosophy is the rational expression of genius. — Alphonse De Lamartine

France is revolutionary or she is nothing at all. The revolution of1789 is her political religion. — Alphonse De Lamartine

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. — Alphonse De Lamartine

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

He, who can create, abhors destruction. — Alphonse De Lamartine

If the grandeur of the aim, the smallness of the means, the immensity of the result are the three measures of a man's genius, who would dare humanly compare a great man of modern history with Muhammad? — Alphonse De Lamartine

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

Music is the literature of the heart; it commences where speech ends. — Alphonse De Lamartine

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

The most effective coquetry is innocence. — Alphonse De Lamartine

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

When a dog is in your life, there is always a reason to laugh. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Modesty and dew love the shade. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Argument should be polite as well as logical. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Void of freedom, what would virtue be? — Alphonse De Lamartine

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

Assassination makes only martyrs, not converts. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Ink is the transcript of thought. — Alphonse De Lamartine

All nature is the temple; earth the altar. — Alphonse De Lamartine

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. — Alphonse De Lamartine

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

Mystery hovers over all things here below. — Alphonse De Lamartine

In these written tears alone have I expiated the hardness and ingratitude of my heart of eighteen years. I can never read over these verses without adoring that youthful image which the transparent and plaintive waves of the Gulf of Naples will ever bring to me, - nor without hating myself. But souls above forgive. Hers has forgiven me. Forgive me, too, reader, for I have wept. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Man is God by his faculty for thought. — Alphonse De Lamartine

There is no man more complete than the one who travelled a lot, who changed the shape of his thoughts and his life twenty times. — Alphonse De Lamartine

My dog! the difference between thee and me knows only our Creator. — Alphonse De Lamartine

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

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? — Alphonse De Lamartine

Time is a great ocean which, like the other ocean, overflows with our remains. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Every time that a people which has long crouched in slavery and ignorance is moved to its lowest depths there appear monsters and heroes, prodigies of crime and prodigies of virtue. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Radicalism is but the desperation of logic. — Alphonse De Lamartine

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

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

Kindness is virtue itself. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Good manners require space and time. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Brutality to an animal is cruelty to mankind - it is only the difference in the victim. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Sometimes, when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated — Alphonse De Lamartine

Unanimity is the mistress of strength. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Experience is the only prophecy of wise men. — Alphonse De Lamartine

God - but a word invoked to explain the world. — Alphonse De Lamartine

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