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The existence of the soldier, next to capital punishment, is the most grievous vestige of barbarism which survives among men.

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
War
Survives
Next
Barbarism
Men
Capital
Punishment
Soldier
Conflict
Among
Vestige
Existence
Grievous

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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.
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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?
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Of what use is the memory of facts, if not to serve as an example of good or of evil?
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Poetry is the disease of the brain.
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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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Greatness is the dream of youth realized in old age.
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The first among mankind will always be those who make something imperishable out of a sheet of paper, a canvas, a piece of marble, or a few sounds
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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.
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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
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The loveliest Muse in the world does not feed her owner these girls make fine mistresses but terrible wives
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On the day when man told the story of his life to man, history was born.
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What is a great life but a youthful intention carried out in maturity?
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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
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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.
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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
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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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France, for example, loves at the same time history and the drama, because the one explores the vast destinies of humanity, and the other the individual lot of man.
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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.
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We shall find in our troubled hearts, where discord reigns, two needs which seem at variance, but which merge, as I think, in a common source - the love of the true, and the love of the fabulous.
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A calm despair, without angry convulsions or reproaches directed at heaven, is the essence of wisdom.
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