Alfred de Musset Quotes

57 Sourced Quotes

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

Alfred de Musset
Love is everything; love is the great fact. What matters the lover? What matters the flagon, provided one has the intoxication?

Alfred de Musset
Without woman the two extremities of life would be without succor, and the middle without pleasure.

Alfred de Musset
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
Suspense, of all the torments, is the most difficult to endure.

Alfred de Musset
A man explodes with indignation when a woman ceases to love him, yet he soon finds consolation; a woman is less demonstrative when deserted, and remains longer inconsolable.

Alfred de Musset
As all the perfumes of the vanished day
Rise from the earth still moistened with the dew
So from my chastened soul beneath thy ray
Old love is born anew.

Alfred de Musset
I hate like death the situation of the plagiarist; the glass I drink from is not large, but at least it is my own.

Alfred de Musset
I hate hypocrites, insolent comedians, who put on their virtues with their white gloves.

Alfred de Musset
The most despairing songs are the loveliest of all, I know immortal ones composed only of tears.

Alfred de Musset
The only good thing left to me is that I have sometimes wept.

Alfred de Musset
We always find wit and merit in those who look at us with admiration.

Alfred de Musset
O God! thy pity must have been profound when this miserable world emerged from chaos!

Alfred de Musset
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
It is a common vanity of the aged to believe that they have always been more exemplary than those who have come after them.

Alfred de Musset
There is no bitterer grief than a happy remembrance in a day of sorrow.

Alfred de Musset
O future ages, what will be your fate? Glory, like a shadow, has returned to heaven; Love no longer exists; life is devastated; and man, left alone, believes but in Death.

Alfred de Musset
Human reason may cure illusions, but it can not cure sufferings.

Alfred de Musset
Before marriage, woman is a queen; after marriage, a subject.

Alfred de Musset
The soul, ray of Heaven, invisible prisoner, suffers in its dungeon cruel sorrows.

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

Alfred de Musset
Wine colors the face, to prevent the appearance of modesty.

Alfred de Musset
A woman forgives everything, but the fact that you do not covet her.

Alfred de Musset
How glorious it is, but how painful it is also, to be exceptional in this world!

Alfred de Musset
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
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
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
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
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
Wounds of the heart! your traces are bitter, slow to heal, and always ready to reopen.

Alfred de Musset