Alfred de Musset Quotes

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!

The most disagreeable thing that your worst enemy says to your face does not approach what your best friends say behind your back.

[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?

The life of a devotee is a crusade of which the heart is the Holy Land.

The most despairing songs are the most beautiful, and I know some immortal ones that are pure tears.

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

Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content.

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.

Romanticism is the abuse of adjectives

life is a deep sleep of which love is the dream

Become corrupt, corrupt, and you will cease to suffer!" This has been the cry of all cities to man.

I cannot help it - in spite of myself, infinity torments me.

The only true language in the world is a kiss.

The only truth is love beyond reason.

There is no worse sorrow than remembering happiness in the day of sorrow.

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!

Reason may cure illusions, but not suffering.

One must not trifle with love

Take time as it comes, the wind as it blows, woman as she is.

Disgrace is the synonym of discovery.

Great artists have no country.

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.

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.

A lively retrospect summons back to us once more our youth, with vivid reflex of its early joys and unstained pleasures.

The costliest women are the ones who cost nothing.

The soft contralto notes of a woman's voice are born in the immediate region of the heart.

The mouth keeps silent to hear the heart speak.

Things they don't understand always cause a sensation among the English.

I see that you believe in love such as the poets and romancers have represented... The poets represent love as the sculptors design beauty, as the musicians create melody; that is to say, endowed with an exquisite nervous organization, they gather up with discerning ardor the purest elements of life, the most beautiful lines of matter, and the most harmonious voices of nature.... To try to find in real life such love as this, eternal and absolute, is the same thing as to seek on the public squares such a woman as Venus or to expect nightingales to sing the symphonies of Beethoven.

Happiness may have but one night, as glory but one day.

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.

Christianity ruined emperors, but saved peoples.

Know that there is often hidden in us a dormant poet, always young and alive.

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

Nothing is a sin when you obey the orders of a priest

Memory is what makes us young or old.

Is is true that dictators never dream because they can change their smallest fantasies into realities if they want to?

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.

It is easy to promise, and alas! How easy to forget!

Experience is the name men give to their follies or their sorrows.

I have come too late into a world too old.

How glorious it is - and also how painful - to be an exception.

In love matters; keep your pen from paper.

I deeply wished I could make the stars all come down and breathe them; disappear in them

There are temptations more attractive than angels. Liberty, Patriotism, the good of humanity – words like that are the silver scales of the Tempter’s flaming wings

Man is a pupil, pain is his teacher.

With a kiss let us set out for an unknown world.

Repartee is altogether a natural endowment, and is the lightning of the mind.