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 LamartineExquisite beauty resides rather in the female form than face, where it is also more lasting.
Alphonse de LamartineFrance is revolutionary or she is nothing at all. The revolution of1789 is her political religion.
Alphonse de LamartineIf 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? The most famous men created arms, laws, and empires only. They founded, if anything at all, no more than material powers which often crumbled away before their eyes. This man moved not only armies, legislations, empires, peoples, dynasties, but millions of men in one-third of the then inhabited world; and more than that, he moved the altars, the gods, the religions, the ideas, the beliefs and the souls.
Alphonse de Lamartine