Alphonse de Lamartine Quotes

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

If they say "you have your last chance to look at the world", I wish that look would from Çamlıca of Istanbul.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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?

Love is the enchanted dawn of every heart.

Kindness is virtue itself.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Inspiration is solitary, never consecutive.

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

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

Modesty and dew love the shade.

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

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?

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

An artist should have more than two eyes.

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

Radicalism is but the desperation of logic.

Void of freedom, what would virtue be?

Men are misers, and women prodigal, in affection.

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

Mystery hovers over all things here below.

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.

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

Republicanism and ignorance are in bitter antagonism.

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.

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

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.

All nature is the temple; earth the altar.

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

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

The most effective coquetry is innocence.

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

The attractiveness that exists to man in the very helplessness of woman is scarcely realized.

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

Good manners require space and time.

Religions are not proved, are not demonstrated, are not established, are not overthrown by logic! They are of all the mysteries of nature and the human mind, the most mysterious and most inexplicable; they are of instinct and not of reason.

Utopias are often just premature truths.

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?

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

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)

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