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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

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Invisible is real. Souls have their own world.
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Fainthearted animals move about in herds. The lion walks alone in the desert. Let the poet always walk thus.
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Poetry is the disease of the brain.
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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.
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The human mind, I believe, cares for the True only in the general character of an epoch.
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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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I love the majesty of human suffering.
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.
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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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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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Of late years (perhaps as a result of our political changes) art has borrowed from history more than ever.
Alfred de Vigny
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Do you know that charming part of our country which has been called the garden of France - that spot where, amid verdant plains watered by wide streams, one inhales the purest air of heaven?
Alfred de Vigny
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Of what use is the memory of facts, if not to serve as an example of good or of evil?
Alfred de Vigny
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On the day when man told the story of his life to man, history was born.
Alfred de Vigny
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What is a great life? It is the dreams of youth realised in old age.
Alfred de Vigny
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An army is a nation within a nation, it is one of the vices of courage.
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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Doubt is the freedom of thought. Any claim to truth can be doubted.
Alfred de Vigny
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We live in an age of universal investigation, and of exploration of the sources of all movements.
Alfred de Vigny
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But it is the province of religion, of philosophy, of pure poetry only, to go beyond life, beyond time, into eternity.
Alfred de Vigny