Alfred de Musset famous quotes

With a kiss let us set out for an unknown world.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Kissing #World

Memory is what makes us young or old.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Memories #Young

Alas, everything that men say to one another is alike; the ideas they exchange are almost always the same, in their conversation. But inside all those isolated machines, what hidden recesses, what secret compartments! It is an entire world that each one carries within him, an unknown world that is born and dies in silence! What solitudes all these human bodies are!
-- Alfred de Musset

#Men #Ideas #Silence

Any cigar smoker is a friend, because I know how he feels.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Cigar #Feels

Romanticism is the abuse of adjectives
-- Alfred de Musset

#Abuse #Adjectives #Romanticism

How glorious it is - and also how painful - to be an exception.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Wisdom #Pain #Humorous

The only truth is love beyond reason.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Love Is #Truth Is #Reason

One must not trifle with love
-- Alfred de Musset

#Love #Trifles

Reason may cure illusions, but not suffering.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Suffering #May #Illusion

Perfection does not exist; to understand it is the triumph of human intelligence; to expect to possess it is the most dangerous kind of madness.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Perfection #Triumph #Doe

Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Memorable #Two #Poetry

There is no worse sorrow than remembering happiness in the day of sorrow.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Sadness #Sorrow #Remember

The mouth keeps silent to hear the heart speak.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Heart #Silence #Mouths

In love matters; keep your pen from paper.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Paper #Letters #Matter

Few persons enjoy real liberty; we are all slaves to ideas or habits.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Real #Ideas #Liberty

It is easy to promise, and alas! How easy to forget!
-- Alfred de Musset

#Promise #Forget #Easy

The only true language in the world is a kiss.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Love #Kissing #World

In my flowery dreams there's always you. I do not regret it one bit.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Dream #Regret

A happy memory is perhaps on this earth truer than happiness itself.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Memories #Earth #Happy Memories

life is a deep sleep of which love is the dream
-- Alfred de Musset

#Dream #Sleep #Love Is

The heart that once has been your shrine for other loves is too divine
-- Alfred de Musset

#Heart #Love Is #Shrines

If love is a play, this play, as old as the world, fiasco or not, it is, all in all, the least bad thing that has so far been found. The roles are trite, I admit, but if the play had no value the whole universe wouldn’t know it by heart
-- Alfred de Musset

#Heart #Love Is #Play

Nothing is a sin when you obey the orders of a priest
-- Alfred de Musset

#Order #Sin #Priests

The blood of my motherland waters a magic plant that cures all ills. That plant is art, and sometimes art needs corruption as a kind of fertilizer
-- Alfred de Musset

#Art #Blood #Water

I have come too late into a world too old.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Too Late #World

Look at the sun! It’s dry, it’s dead, it needs a drink, it wants blood! And I’ll give it blood!
-- Alfred de Musset

#Blood #Giving #Dry

There are temptations more attractive than angels. Liberty, Patriotism, the good of humanity – words like that are the silver scales of the Tempter’s flaming wings
-- Alfred de Musset

#Angel #Wings #Humanity

I deeply wished I could make the stars all come down and breathe them; disappear in them
-- Alfred de Musset

#Stars #Down And #Breathe

You’re like a lighthouse shining beside the sea of humanity, motionless: all you can see is your own reflection in the water. You’re alone, so you think it’s a vast, magnificent panorama. You haven’t sounded the depths. You simply believe in the beauty of God’s creation. But I have spent all this time in the water, diving deep into the howling ocean of life, deeper than anyone. While you were admiring the surface, I saw the shipwrecks, the drowned bodies, the monsters of the deep
-- Alfred de Musset

#Believe #Ocean #Reflection

What a frightful weapon is human thought! It is our defense and our safeguard, the most precious gift that God has made us. It is ours and it obeys us; we may launch it forth into space, but, once outside of our feeble brains, it is gone; we can no longer control it.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Space #Brain #Defense

The glass I drink from is not large, but at least it is my own.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Glasses #Originality #Drink

As all the perfumes of the vanished dayRise from the earth still moistened with the dewSo from my chastened soul beneath thy rayOld love is born anew.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Love Is #Soul #Earth

If you are weak, dependent upon others, inclined to allow yourself to be dominated by opinion, to take root wherever you see a little soil, make for yourself a shield that will resist everything, for if you yield to your weaker nature you will not grow, you will dry up like a dead plant, and you will bear neither fruit nor flowers. The sap of your life will dissipate into the formation of a useless bark; all your actions will be as colorless as the leaves of the willow; you will have no tears to water you, but those from your own eyes, to nourish you, no heart but your own.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Flower #Heart #Eye

I could not clearly distinguish what was passing in my head; it seemed to me that I was under the influence of a horrible dream and that I had but to awake to find myself cured; at times it seemed that my entire life had been a dream, ridiculous and childish, the falseness of which had just been disclosed.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Dream #Self #Ridiculous

It was one of those somber evenings when the sighing of the wind resembles the moans of a dying man; a storm was brewing, and between the splashes of rain on the windows there was the silence of death. All nature suffers in such moments; the trees writhe in pain and twist their heads; the birds of the fields cower under the bushes; the streets of cities are deserted.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Pain #Rain #Men

The apartments of the rich are cabinets of curiosities: a conglomeration of classical antiquity, gothic, renaissance; Louis XIII... Something from every century but our own, a predicament that has arisen in no other period... so that we seem to be subsisting on the ruins of the past, as if the end of the world were near.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Past #Curiosity #World

I can't help it, the idea of the infinite torments me.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Ideas #Helping #Infinite

The fumes of wine fermented in my head; it was one of those moments of intoxication when all that ones sees and hears, speaks to one of the adored.... One would willingly embrace all who smile, and one feels that he is brother of all who live.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Brother #Wine #Speak

Things they don't understand always cause a sensation among the English.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Causes

Man is a pupil, pain is his teacher.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Teacher #Pain #Men

I cannot help it - in spite of myself, infinity torments me.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Infinity #Helping #Spite

The most despairing songs are the most beautiful, and I know some immortal ones that are pure tears.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Beautiful #Song #Tears

What I need is a woman who is something, anything: either very beautiful or very kind or in the last resort very wicked; very witty or very stupid, but something.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Beautiful #Witty #Stupid

I don't know where my road is going, but I know that I walk better when I hold your hand.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Hands #Walks

Is is true that dictators never dream because they can change their smallest fantasies into realities if they want to?
-- Alfred de Musset

#Dream #Reality #Want

Christianity ruined emperors, but saved peoples.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Christianity #Emperor #Ruined

Experience is the name men give to their follies or their sorrows.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Men #Names #Giving

Become corrupt, corrupt, and you will cease to suffer!" This has been the cry of all cities to man...
-- Alfred de Musset

#Men #Cities #Suffering

... but one loves, and when one is on the brink of death, one turns around to look backward, and one says to oneself: "I have often suffered, I have sometimes been wrong, but I have loved.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Love #Looks #Sometimes

Take time as it comes, the wind as it blows, woman as she is.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Women #Blow #Wind

The return makes one love the farewell.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Goodbye #Farewell #Return

I see that you believe in love such as the poets and romancers have represented... The poets represent love as the sculptors design beauty, as the musicians create melody; that is to say, endowed with an exquisite nervous organization, they gather up with discerning ardor the purest elements of life, the most beautiful lines of matter, and the most harmonious voices of nature.... To try to find in real life such love as this, eternal and absolute, is the same thing as to seek on the public squares such a woman as Venus or to expect nightingales to sing the symphonies of Beethoven.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Love #Beautiful #Real

[I]f you are truly a man, sure of yourself and confident of your strength, you may taste of life without fear and without reserve; you may be sad or joyous, deceived or respected; but be sure you are loved, for what matters the rest?
-- Alfred de Musset

#Love #Men #What Matters

Take love as a sober man takes wine; do not become a drunkard. If your mistress is sincere and faithful, love her for that; but if she is not, if she is merely young and beautiful, love her for that; if she is agreeable and spirituelle, love her for that; if she is none of these things but merely loves you, love her for that. Love does not come to us every day.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Love #Beautiful #Wine

Oh! my friend, when you feel bursting on your lips the vow of eternal love, do not be afraid to yield, but do not confound wine with intoxication; do not think the cup divine because the draft is of celestial flavor; do not be astonished to find it broken and empty in the evening.
-- Alfred de Musset

#Wine #Thinking #Yield