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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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The human mind, I believe, cares for the True only in the general character of an epoch.
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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On the day when man told the story of his life to man, history was born.
Alfred de Vigny
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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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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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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
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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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Doubt is the freedom of thought. Any claim to truth can be doubted.
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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A calm despair, without angry convulsions or reproaches directed at heaven, is the essence of wisdom.
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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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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An army is a nation within a nation, it is one of the vices of courage.
Alfred de Vigny
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Do you not see with your own eyes the chrysalis fact assume by degrees the wings of fiction?
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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History is a novel for which the people is the author.
Alfred de Vigny
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What is a great life but a youthful intention carried out in maturity?
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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Only silence is great all else is weakness.
Alfred de Vigny