Alphonse de Lamartine Quotes

52 Sourced Quotes

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

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

Alphonse de Lamartine
Music is the literature of the heart; it commences where speech ends.
Variant translation: Music is the literature of the heart, it takes up communication where words stop.

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

Alphonse de Lamartine
Sometimes, when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated.

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

Alphonse de Lamartine
O time, arrest your flight! and you, propitious hours, arrest your course! Let us savor the fleeting delights of our most beautiful days!

Alphonse de Lamartine
A lover who is no longer loved is still good for something: he serves to hide the one who has replaced him.

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

Alphonse de Lamartine
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.

Alphonse de Lamartine
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.

Alphonse de Lamartine
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.

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

Alphonse de Lamartine
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.

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

Alphonse de Lamartine
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.

Alphonse de Lamartine
There are no women to whom virtue comes easier than those who possess no attractions.

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

Alphonse de Lamartine
Each art has its language, its poetry and its eloquence.

Alphonse de Lamartine
With the exception of poetry or eloquence—those immaterial arts which only require a word or a pen—all the other arts require a material: blocks of marble for the sculptor, canvas and colors for the painter. Only the musician requires a performer. That is why we can so rarely be given the pleasure of hearing the soul of a great musician in his work.

Alphonse de Lamartine
I love the people because I believe in God. For, if I did not believe in God, what would the people be to me? I should enjoy at ease that lucky throw of the dice, which chance had turned up for me, the day of my birth; and, with a secret, savage joy, I should say, "So much the worse for the losers!--the world is a lottery. Woe to the conquered!

Alphonse de Lamartine
There are as many arts as there are senses for man; each sense has its own.

Alphonse de Lamartine
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.

Alphonse de Lamartine
The senses of speech, of the ears, and of the eyes, are the three most powerful among these organs which put the soul in contact with the exterior world; so the art of eloquence, or of poetry, is the first of these arts—that which exerts the most influence on us or on other men, the art of modifying the soul itself by speech that is heard, or the art of modifying the soul of other men by speech that is spoken.

Alphonse de Lamartine
By a more sophisticated sense of hearing, the musician can perceive in sonorous nature the modulations of sounds more completely than others.

Alphonse de Lamartine