Alphonse de Lamartine quotes:

Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can; and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys.

If one had but a single glance to give the world, one should gaze on Istanbul.

To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic.

Limited in his nature, infinite in his desire, man is a fallen god who remembers heaven.

A conscience without God is like a court without a judge.

Shall not this bygone Eden that we knew In our Eternal Life have shape and hue? For where Time is not shall not all Time be? In that calm breast whereto our souls are cleaving Shall we not find our loved ones beyond grieving About the hearth-stone of Eternity?

Hence life, as through a cloud, for me I see Vanish, and to the past's dark shade 'tis chas'd; As a grand image love remains to me-- Sole remnant of a dream, by morn effac'd.

If greatness of purpose, smallness of means, and astonishing results are the three criteria of a human genius, who could dare compare any great man in history with Muhammad?

It is because of the servility of photography that I am fundamentally contemptuous of this chance invention which will never be an art but which plagiarizes nature by means of optics. (1848)

Brutality to an animal is cruelty to mankind - it is only the difference in the victim.

Sometimes, only one person is missing, and the whole world seems depopulated.

The more I see of the representatives of the people, the more I admire my dogs.

Too much I've seen, and felt, and lov'd in life, Living I come to seek Lethaean calm; Let me, fair scenes! forget all worldly strife, Oblivion solely is my bosom's balm.

The loss of a mother is always keenly felt, even if her health be such as to incapacitate her from taking an active part in the care of the family. She is the sweet rallying-point for affection, obedience, and a thousand tendernesses. Dreary the blank when she is withdrawn!

Love is the enchanted dawn of every heart.

My mother was convinced, and on this head I have retained her firm belief, that to kill animals for the purpose of feeding on their flesh is one of the most deplorable and shameful infirmities of the human state; that it is one of those curses cast upon man either by his fall, or by the obduracy of his own perversity.

Thou makest the man, O Sorrow!--yes, the whole man,--as the crucible gold.

Republicanism and ignorance are in bitter antagonism.

Habit with it's iron sinews, clasps us and leads us day by day.

Radicalism is but the desperation of logic.

Limited in his nature, infinite in his desires, man is a fallen god who remembers the heavens.

There is a woman at the begining of all great things.

Music is the literature of the heart; it commences where speech ends.

The greatness of a popular character is less according to the ratio of his genius than the sympathy he shows with the prejudices and even the absurdities of his time. Fanatics do not select the cleverest but the most fanatical leaders as was evidenced in the choice of Robespierre by the French Jacobins, and in that of Cromwell by the English Puritans.

Let us enjoy the fugitive hour. Man has no harbor, time has no shore; it rushes on, and carries us with it.

Friendship, sweet-resting place of the soul, the gloaming wherein our hearts find peace....

The People will not allow themselves to be changed into hogs by the Circes of Atheism. Their souls will flash indignation against their transformers. A day will come when they will see that they are impoverished under the pretext of being enriched; that, when they are robbed of their souls and of God, both their titles to liberty are stolen from them.

Every time that a people which has long crouched in slavery and ignorance is moved to its lowest depths there appear monsters and heroes, prodigies of crime and prodigies of virtue.

At twenty every one is republican.

Philosopher, orator, apostle, legislator, warrior, conqueror of ideas, restorer of rational dogmas, of a cult without images, the founder of twenty terrestrial empires and of one spiritual empire: that is MUHAMMAD. As regards all the standards by which human greatness may be measured, we may well ask IS THERE ANY MAN GREATER THAN HE?

Let us savour the swift delights of the most beautiful of our days!

Sentiment is the poetry of the imagination.

Experience is the only prophecy of wise men.

Esteem incites friendship, but not love; the former is the twin brother of Reverence; the latter is the child of Equality.

The people only understand what they can feel; the only orators that can affect them are those who move them.

Providence conceals itself in the details of human affairs, but becomes unveiled in the generalities of history.

Private passions tire and exhaust themselves, public ones never.

There is no man more complete than the one who travelled a lot, who changed the shape of his thoughts and his life twenty times.

Kindness is virtue itself.

Inspiration is solitary, never consecutive.

We don't have two hearts, one for animals and one for humans ; we have one heart or we don't have any.

If God is thy father, human beings are thy brothers and sisters.

Man is born barbarous--he is ransomed from the condition of beasts only by being cultivated.

If greatness of purpose, smallness of means, and astonishing results are the three criteria of a human genius, who could dare compare any great man in history with Muhammad? The most famous men created arms, laws, and empires only. They founded, if anything at all, no more than material powers which often crumbled away before their eyes. This man moved not only armies, legislations, empires, peoples, dynasties, but millions of men in one-third of the then inhabited world; and more than that, he moved the altars, the gods, the religions, the ideas, the beliefs and the souls.

Void of freedom, what would virtue be?

We cannot have two hearts, one for the animals and one for men. In cruelty towards the former and cruelty to the latter there is no difference but in the victim.

The founder of twenty terrestrial empires and of o­ne spiritual empire, that is Muhammed. As regards all standards by which human greatness may be measured, we may well ask, is there any man greater than he?

There are places and climates, seasons and hours, with their outward circumstance, so much in harmony with certain impressions of the heart, that Nature and the soul of man appear to be parts of one vast whole.

The photographer will never replace the painter; one is a man, the other a machine. Let us compare them no longer. (1848)

Chance often gives us that which we should not have presumed to ask.

Life is too short to spare an hour of it in the indulgence of this evil passion.

Let us love the passing hour, let us hurry up and enjoy our time.

Philosophy is the rational expression of genius.

Mystery hovers over all things here below.

Joy is a flame which association alone can keep alive, and which goes out unless communicated.

Barbarism recommences by the excess of civilization.

Sad is his lot, who, once at least in his life, has not been a poet.

The reason that women are so much more sociable than men is because they act more from the heart than the intellect.

Enthusiasm is the intoxication of earnestness.

Assassination makes only martyrs, not converts.

A woman's strength is most potent when robed in gentleness.

History is neither more nor less than biography on a large scale.

The impartiality of history is not that of the mirror, which merely reflects objects, but of the judge, who sees, listens, and decides.

An artist should have more than two eyes.

Ink is the transcript of thought.

It is the qualities of the heart, not those of the face, that should attract us in women, because the former are durable, the latter transitory. So lovable women, like roses, retain their sweetness long after they have lost their beauty.

Civil wars leave nothing but tombs.

The death of a man's wife is like cutting down an ancient oak that has long shaded the family mansion. Henceforth the glare of the world, with its cares and vicissitudes falls upon the old widower's heart, and there is nothing to break their force, or shield him from the full weight of misfortune. It is as if his right hand were withered; as if one wing of his angel was broken, and every movement that he made brought him to the ground.

Men are misers, and women prodigal, in affection.

Nature has given women two painful but heavenly gifts, which distinguish them, and often raise them above human nature,--compassion and enthusiasm. By compassion, they devote themselves; by enthusiasm they exalt themselves.

Eternity is so certain and so terrible that a thousand lives would not suffice to prepare for it.

It is in the habits of lawyers that every accusation appears insufficient if they do not exaggerate it even to calumny; it is thus that justice itself loses its sanctity and its respect amongst men.

France is revolutionary or she is nothing at all. The revolution of1789 is her political religion.

Private passions grow tired and wear themselves out; political passions, never.

Yet, in these autumn days when Nature expires, Here, in these veiled scenes, I find more attractions; It is a friend's sad goodbye; it is the last smile From lips that death is going to close forever!

God - but a word invoked to explain the world.

Virginity is the poetry, not the reality, of life.

Unanimity is the mistress of strength.

True greatness is sovereign wisdom. We are never deceived by our virtues.

Good manners require space and time.

Love of country produces among men such examples as Cincinnatus, Alfred, Washington--pure, unselfish, symmetrical; among women, Vittoria Colonna, Madame Roland, Charlotte Corday, Jeanne Darc--romantic, devoted, marvelous.

Poetry has been the guardian angel of humanity in all ages.

Poetry is the morning dream of great minds.

All our tastes are but reminiscences.

After his blood, that which a man can next give out of himself is a tear.

Time is a great ocean which, like the other ocean, overflows with our remains.

Treason, which begins by being cautious, ends by betraying itself.

Photography is better than art. It is a solar phenomenon in which the artist collaborates with the sun.

When a dog is in your life, there is always a reason to laugh.

I am the fellow citizen of every being that thinks; my country is Truth.

Argument should be polite as well as logical.

Man is God by his faculty for thought.

Fiction is the microscope of truth.

Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. I am the fellow citizen of every being that thinks; my country is Truth.

Eloquence dwells quite as much in the hearts of the hearers as on the lips of the orator.

The most effective coquetry is innocence.

It is admirable to die the victim of one's faith; it is sad to die the dupe of one's ambition.

It is for truth that God created genius.

Newspapers will ultimately engross all literature.

...to kill animals for the purpose of feeding on their flesh is one of the most deplorable and shameful infirmities of the human state

Man hath no Heaven and Time's coast is chartless. He speeds; we pass away!

Ah! let us love, my Love, for Time is heartless, Be happy while you may!

History teaches everything, even the future.

My dog! the difference between thee and me knows only our Creator.

There is a name hidden in the shadow of my soul, where I read it night and day and no other eye sees it.

Man, man, is thy brother, and thy father is God.

True love is the ripe fruit of a lifetime.

Poets and heroes are of the same race, the latter do what the former conceive.

Before this century shall run out, journalism will be the whole press. Mankind will write their book day by day, hour by hour, page by page. Thought will spread abroad with the rapidity of light--instantly conceived, instantly written, instantly understood at the extremities of the earth.

I say to this night: "Pass more slowly"; and the dawn will come to dispel the night.

Soul of the universe, Sire, God, Creator, Lord, I believe in Thee, 'neath all these names: And without having need to hear thy word, In the sky's brow my glorious creed I trace.

What mortal is there, over whose first joys and happiness does not break some storm, dispelling with its icy breath his fanciful illusions, and shattering his altar?

What is our life but a succession of preludes to that unknown song whose first solemn note is sounded by death?

All nature is the temple; earth the altar.

And when night, guiding her bright train of stars, Throws o'er the sleeping world her gloomy veil, Lonely amidst the desert and the darkness, Musing upon the night's calm majesty; Wrapt up in quietness, with shade and silence, My soul more closely worshippeth Thy presence; With an internal day I feel enlighten'd, And hear a voice, which biddeth me to hope.

Utopias are often just premature truths.

We are earth's children, and life is the same in sap as in blood; all that the earth, our mother, feels and expresses to the eye by her form and aspect, in melancholy or in splendor, finds an echo within us.

He, who can create, abhors destruction.

Death, with funereal shades in vain surrounds me, My reason through his darkness seeth light: 'Tis the last step which brings me close to Thee: 'Tis the veil falling, 'twixt Thy face and mine.