Alphonse de Lamartine Quotes

Habit with it's iron sinews, clasps us and leads us day by day.

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

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.

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

Silence,--the applause of real and durable impressions.

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.

Inspiration is solitary, never consecutive.

God has placed the genius of women in their hearts, because the works of this genius are always works of love.

Sentiment is the poetry of the imagination.

Unanimity is the mistress of strength.

The greatness of a popular character is less according to the ratio of his genius than the sympathy he shows with the prejudices and even the absurdities of his time. Fanatics do not select the cleverest but the most fanatical leaders as was evidenced in the choice of Robespierre by the French Jacobins, and in that of Cromwell by the English Puritans.

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

Man, man, is thy brother, and thy father is God.

God - but a word invoked to explain the world.

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

Joy is a flame which association alone can keep alive, and which goes out unless communicated.

If God is thy father, human beings are thy brothers and sisters.

Eloquence dwells quite as much in the hearts of the hearers as on the lips of the orator.

Man is God by his faculty for thought.

Men are misers, and women prodigal, in affection.

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)

Thou makest the man, O Sorrow!--yes, the whole man,--as the crucible gold.

Ink is the transcript of thought.

Providence conceals itself in the details of human affairs, but becomes unveiled in the generalities of history.

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? 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.

Fiction is the microscope of truth.

Enthusiasm springs from the imagination, and self-sacrifice from the heart. Women are, therefore, more naturally heroic than men. All nations have in their annals some of these miracles of patriotism, of which woman is the instrument in the hands of God.

Man is born barbarous--he is ransomed from the condition of beasts only by being cultivated.

We don't have two hearts, one for animals and one for humans ; we have one heart or we don't have any.

History is neither more nor less than biography on a large scale.

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

...to kill animals for the purpose of feeding on their flesh is one of the most deplorable and shameful infirmities of the human state

When a dog is in your life, there is always a reason to laugh.

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.

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.

There is a name hidden in the shadow of my soul, where I read it night and day and no other eye sees it.

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!

Virginity is the poetry, not the reality, of life.

The more I see of the representatives of the people, the more I admire my dogs.

A woman's strength is most potent when robed in gentleness.

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. I am the fellow citizen of every being that thinks; my country is Truth.

Good manners require space and time.

Poetry is the morning dream of great minds.

True greatness is sovereign wisdom. We are never deceived by our virtues.

A conscience without God is like a court without a judge.

Women have much more heart and much more imagination than men; hence, fancy often allures them.

Love is the enchanted dawn of every heart.

True love is the ripe fruit of a lifetime.