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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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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
Life
Reproduction
Imitation
Arts
Use
Art

More quotes by 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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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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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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I love the majesty of human suffering.
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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Doubt is the freedom of thought. Any claim to truth can be doubted.
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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We live in an age of universal investigation, and of exploration of the sources of all movements.
Alfred de Vigny
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The study of social progress is to-day not less needed in literature than is the analysis of the human heart.
Alfred de Vigny
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History is a novel for which the people is the author.
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
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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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The events I sought were never as great as I needed them to be.
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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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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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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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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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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The true God, the mighty God, is the God of ideas.
Alfred de Vigny
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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.
Alfred de Vigny