Alphonse de Lamartine Quotes

The most effective coquetry is innocence.

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!

Barbarism recommences by the excess of civilization.

Philosophy is the rational expression of genius.

Private passions tire and exhaust themselves, public ones never.

Modesty and dew love the shade.

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

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

My dog! the difference between thee and me knows only our Creator.

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

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

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

Radicalism is but the desperation of logic.

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

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

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

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

All our tastes are but reminiscences.

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.

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.

Kindness is virtue itself.

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

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

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

Assassination makes only martyrs, not converts.

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

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

Enthusiasm is the intoxication of earnestness.

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

Experience is the only prophecy of wise men.

Newspapers will ultimately engross all literature.

Friendship, sweet-resting place of the soul, the gloaming wherein our hearts find peace.

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.

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

The founder of twenty terrestrial empires and of o­ne spiritual empire, that is Muhammed. As regards all standards by which human greatness may be measured, we may well ask, is there any man greater than he?

Mystery hovers over all things here below.

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

Argument should be polite as well as logical.

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

Silence and simplicity obtrude on no one, but are yet two unequaled attractions in woman.

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.

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.

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?

Civil wars leave nothing but tombs.

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

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

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

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.