Quote

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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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
Less
Details
Carries
Individual
Noble
Carrie
Care
Complete
Indifferent
Real
Civilization
Cares
Along
Grand
Events
Advance
Values
Total
Rather
Individuals

More quotes by Alfred de Vigny

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Doubt is the freedom of thought. Any claim to truth can be doubted.
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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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Of what use were the arts if they were only the reproduction and the imitation of life?
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Every man has seen the wall that limits his mind.
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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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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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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 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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What is a great life if not a youthful idea executed by a man of mature years.
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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Hope is the greatest madness. What can we expect of a world that we enter with the assurance of seeing our fathers and mothers die? A world where, if two beings love each other and give their lives to each other, both can be sure that one will watch the other perish?
Alfred de Vigny
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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
Alfred de Vigny
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Silence alone is great all else is feebleness . . . Perform with all your heart your long and heavy task. . . . Then as do I, say naught, but suffer and die.
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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Greatness is the dream of youth realized in old age.
Alfred de Vigny
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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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Poetry is the disease of the brain.
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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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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A calm despair, without angry convulsions or reproaches directed at heaven, is the essence of wisdom.
Alfred de Vigny