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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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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
Facts
Thus
Separated
Hands
Stage
Composition
Two
Hand
Double
Might
Opinion
Author
Mathematically
Public
Originals
Undergone
Almost
Original
Reckon
Fact
Third
Stages
History
Thirds
Reaches

More quotes by Alfred de Vigny

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Every man has seen the wall that limits his mind.
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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An army is a nation within a nation, it is one of the vices of courage.
Alfred de Vigny
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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.
Alfred de Vigny
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Greatness is the dream of youth realized in old age.
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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Hope is the biggest of our foolish things.
Alfred de Vigny
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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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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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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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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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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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I love the majesty of human suffering.
Alfred de Vigny
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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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Art ought never to be considered except in its relations with its ideal beauty.
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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But it is the province of religion, of philosophy, of pure poetry only, to go beyond life, beyond time, into eternity.
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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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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What is a great life? It is the dreams of youth realised in old age.
Alfred de Vigny