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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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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
Hold
Idiots
Bring
Confess
Greatest
Manipulate
Power
Coincidence
Together
Idiot
Even
Meant
Always
Fame
Coincidences
Men
Circumstances
Tossed
More quotes by Alfred de Vigny
Fainthearted animals move about in herds. The lion walks alone in the desert. Let the poet always walk thus.
Alfred de Vigny
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
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
Art ought never to be considered except in its relations with its ideal beauty.
Alfred de Vigny
Do you not see with your own eyes the chrysalis fact assume by degrees the wings of fiction?
Alfred de Vigny
I love the majesty of human suffering.
Alfred de Vigny
Hope is the biggest of our foolish things.
Alfred de Vigny
What is a great life? It is the dreams of youth realised in old age.
Alfred de Vigny
Invisible is real. Souls have their own world.
Alfred de Vigny
What is a great life but a youthful intention carried out in maturity?
Alfred de Vigny
Of what use is the memory of facts, if not to serve as an example of good or of evil?
Alfred de Vigny
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
History is a novel for which the people is the author.
Alfred de Vigny
The loveliest Muse in the world does not feed her owner these girls make fine mistresses but terrible wives
Alfred de Vigny
On the day when man told the story of his life to man, history was born.
Alfred de Vigny
But it is the province of religion, of philosophy, of pure poetry only, to go beyond life, beyond time, into eternity.
Alfred de Vigny
Greatness is the dream of youth realized in old age.
Alfred de Vigny
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
An army is a nation within a nation, it is one of the vices of courage.
Alfred de Vigny
The existence of the soldier, next to capital punishment, is the most grievous vestige of barbarism which survives among men.
Alfred de Vigny
