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No writer, no matter how gifted, immortalizes himself unless he has crystallized into expressive and original phrase the eternal sentiments and yearnings of the human heart.

Alfred de Vigny

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Alfred de Vigny
Age: 66 †
Born: 1797
Born: March 27
Died: 1863
Died: September 17
Diarist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Translator
Writer
Alfred Victor de Vigny
Alfred Victor
comte de Vigny
Writer
Yearning
Human
Gifted
Humans
Sentiments
Matter
Phrases
Heart
Originals
Crystallized
Original
Yearnings
Eternal
Expressive
Unless
Phrase

More quotes by Alfred de Vigny

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Of what use were the arts if they were only the reproduction and the imitation of life?
Alfred de Vigny
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Honour is manly decency. The shame of being found wanting in it means everything to us. Is this, then, the indefinable, the sacred thing?
Alfred de Vigny
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One might almost reckon mathematically that, having undergone the double composition of public opinion and of the author, their history reaches us at third hand and is thus separated by two stages from the original fact.
Alfred de Vigny
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What is the use of theorizing as to wherein lies the charm that moves us?
Alfred de Vigny
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I have a private theory, Sir, that there are no heroes and no monsters in this world. Only children should be allowed to use these words
Alfred de Vigny
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Do you not see with your own eyes the chrysalis fact assume by degrees the wings of fiction?
Alfred de Vigny
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The loveliest Muse in the world does not feed her owner these girls make fine mistresses but terrible wives
Alfred de Vigny
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The acts of the human race on the world's stage have doubtless a coherent unity, but the meaning of the vast tragedy enacted will be visible only to the eye of God, until the end, which will reveal it perhaps to the last man.
Alfred de Vigny
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To hold power has always meant to manipulate idiots and circumstances and those circumstances and those idiots, tossed together, bring about those coincidences to which even the greatest men confess they owe most of their fame
Alfred de Vigny
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The human mind, I believe, cares for the True only in the general character of an epoch.
Alfred de Vigny
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What it values most of all is the sum total of events and the advance of civilization, which carries individuals along with it but, indifferent to details, it cares less to have them real than noble or, rather, grand and complete.
Alfred de Vigny
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Oh, I have a habit of letting myself be lectured on the things I know best. I like to see if they are understood in the same way I understand for there are many ways of knowing the same thing
Alfred de Vigny
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What is a great life if not a youthful idea executed by a man of mature years.
Alfred de Vigny
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Perform your long and heavy task with energy, treading the path to which Fate has been pleased to call you.
Alfred de Vigny
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Only silence is great all else is weakness.
Alfred de Vigny
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From this, without doubt, sprang the fable. Man created it thus, because it was not given him to see more than himself and nature, which surrounds him but he created it true with a truth all its own.
Alfred de Vigny
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Art ought never to be considered except in its relations with its ideal beauty.
Alfred de Vigny
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Just as we descend into our consciences to judge of actions which our minds can not weigh, can we not also search in ourselves for the feeling which gives birth to forms of thought, always vague and cloudy?
Alfred de Vigny
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I think, then, that man, after having satisfied his first longing for facts, wanted something fuller - some grouping, some adaptation to his capacity and experience, of the links of this vast chain of events which his sight could not take in.
Alfred de Vigny
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Fainthearted animals move about in herds. The lion walks alone in the desert. Let the poet always walk thus.
Alfred de Vigny