François-René de Chateaubriand Quotes

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The original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.

François-René de Chateaubriand
That two men may be real friends, they must have opposite opinions, similar principles, and different loves and hatreds.

François-René de Chateaubriand
There are two sorts of ruins: one is the work of time, the other of men.

François-René de Chateaubriand
I have explored the seas of the Old World and the New, and trodden the soil of the four quarters of the Earth. Having camped in the cabins of Iroquois, and beneath the tents of Arabs, in the wigwams of Hurons, in the remains of Athens, Jerusalem, Memphis, Carthage, Granada, among Greeks, Turks and Moors, among forests and ruins; after wearing the bearskin cloak of the savage, and the silk caftan of the Mameluke, after suffering poverty, hunger, thirst, and exile, I have sat, a minister and ambassador, covered with gold lace, gaudy with ribbons and decorations, at the table of kings, the feasts of princes and princesses, only to fall once more into indigence and know imprisonment.

François-René de Chateaubriand
Memory is often the attribute of stupidity; it generally belongs to heavy spirits whom it makes even heavier by the baggage it loads them down with.

François-René de Chateaubriand
Murder will never be in my eyes an object of admiration and an argument for freedom; I know nothing more servile, more despicable, more cowardly, more narrow-minded than a terrorist.

François-René de Chateaubriand
We are convinced that the great writers have told their own story in their works. One only truly describes one's own heart by attributing it to another, and the greater part of genius is composed of memories.

François-René de Chateaubriand
Napoleon was all the weaknesses and all the greatnesses of man.

François-René de Chateaubriand
The heart is like the tree that gives balm for the wounds of man, only when the iron has wounded it.

François-René de Chateaubriand
As soon as a true thought has entered our mind, it gives a light which makes us see a crowd of other objects which we have never perceived before.

François-René de Chateaubriand
What has become of those personages who made so much noise in the world? Time has made one step, and the face of the earth is renewed.

François-René de Chateaubriand
Though we have not employed the arguments usually advanced by the apologists of Christianity, we have arrived by a different chain of reasoning at the same conclusion: Christianity is perfect; men are imperfect. Now, a perfect consequence cannot spring from an imperfect principle. Christianity, therefore, is not the work of men. If Christianity is not the work of man, it can have come from none but God. If it came from God, men cannot have acquired a knowledge of it except by revelation. Therefore, Christianity is a revealed religion.

François-René de Chateaubriand
Achilles exists only through Homer. Take away the art of writing from this world, and you will probably take away its glory.

François-René de Chateaubriand
Aristocracy has three successive ages: the age of superiorities, the age of privileges, the age of vanities. Originating in the first, it degenerates in the second and becomes extinct in the third.

François-René de Chateaubriand
In living literature no person is a competent judge but of works written in his own language. I have expressed my opinion concerning a number of English writers; it is very possible that I may be mistaken, that my admiration and my censure may be equally misplaced, and that my conclusions may appear impertinent and ridiculous on the other side of the Channel.

François-René de Chateaubriand
Atheism can benefit no class of people; neither the unfortunate, whom it bereaves of hope, nor the prosperous, whose joys it renders insipid, nor the soldier, of whom it makes a coward, nor the woman whose beauty and sensibility it mars, nor the mother, who has a son to lose, nor the rulers of men, who have no surer pledge of the fidelity of their subjects than religion.

François-René de Chateaubriand
Something you consider bad may bring out your child's talents; something you consider good may stifle them.

François-René de Chateaubriand
Religion assures us that our afflictions shall have an end; she comforts us, she dries our tears, she promises us another life. On the contrary, in the abominable worship of atheism, human woes are the incense, death is the priest, a coffin the altar, and annihilation the Deity.

François-René de Chateaubriand
Who of us has not shed tears over the tomb of a loved one!

François-René de Chateaubriand
On his conversion to Christianity:
I wept and I believed.

François-René de Chateaubriand
Without woman, man would be rough, rude, solitary, and would ignore all the graces which are but the smiles of love. Woman weaves about him the flowers of life, as the vines of the forest decorate the trunk of the oak with their fragrant garlands.

François-René de Chateaubriand
It is a long way from Combourg to Berlin, from a youthful dreamer to an old minister. I find among the words preceding these: 'In how many places have I already continued writing these Memoirs, and in what place will I finish them?'

François-René de Chateaubriand
Perfect works are rare, because they must be produced at the happy moment when taste and genius unite; and this rare conjuncture, like that of certain planets, appears to occur only after the revolution of several cycles, and only lasts for an instant.

François-René de Chateaubriand
I halt at the beginning of my travels, in Pennsylvania, in order to compare Washington and Bonaparte. I would rather not have concerned myself with them until the point where I had met Napoleon; but if I came to the edge of my grave without having reached the year 1814 in my tale, no one would then know anything of what I would have written concerning these two representatives of Providence. I remember Castelnau: like me Ambassador to England, who wrote like me a narrative of his life in London. On the last page of Book VII, he says to his son: 'I will deal with this event in Book VIII,' and Book VIII of Castelnau's Memoirs does not exist: that warns me to take advantage of being alive.

François-René de Chateaubriand
Justice is the bread of nations: they are always famishing for it.

François-René de Chateaubriand
How small man is on this little atom where he dies! But how great his intelligence! He knows when the face of the stars must be masked in darkness, when the comets will return after thousands of years, he who lasts only an instant! A microscopic insect lost in a fold of the heavenly robe, the orbs cannot hide from him a single one of their movements in the depth of space. What destinies will those stars, new to us, light? Is their revelation bound up with some new phase of humanity? You will know, race to be born; I know not, and I am departing.

François-René de Chateaubriand
My downfall made a great noise: those who appeared most satisfied criticized the manner of it.

François-René de Chateaubriand
Every institution goes through three stages — utility, privilege, and abuse.

François-René de Chateaubriand
A moral character is attached to autumnal scenes; the leaves falling like our years, the flowers fading like our hours, the clouds fleeting like our illusions, the light diminishing like our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the rivers becoming frozen like our lives—all bear secret relations to our destinies.

François-René de Chateaubriand
I am Bourbon as a matter of honour, royalist according to reason and conviction, and republican by taste and character.

François-René de Chateaubriand