Alphonse de Lamartine Quotes

52 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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
Too much I've seen, and felt, and lov'd in life, Living I come to seek Lethaean calm; Let me, fair scenes! forget all worldly strife, Oblivion solely is my bosom's balm.

Alphonse de Lamartine
If asked of me personally, I would confess that I prefer music to painting, undoubtedly because nature has given me a more sensitive sense of hearing than sight.

Alphonse de Lamartine
Music is, of all the arts, that which most closely approaches the word, the supreme art. Music is nearly the word, and sometimes more than the word; because, if it doesn't specify the ideas in letters, it arouses unlimited sensations and sentiments in sounds.

Alphonse de Lamartine
Soul, spark most precious of a flame divine,
Immortal dweller in a frame that dies,
Hush these alarms: for freedom shall be thine.

Alphonse de Lamartine
I have always believed that music and poetry detract from each other when they are associated. Each is an art complete in itself: music contains its own feeling and beautiful poetry its own melody.

Alphonse de Lamartine
The melodious breeze, running throughout Italy, became one with Italy itself. It is the sound of a voice of a loved person, inseparable from the enchantment produced on us by the person himself. As soon as one sets foot on Italian soil, one hears this voice in every murmur, in every tree, in every wave, in every breeze, just as in every verse.

Alphonse de Lamartine
Italy is not only a country; it is a musical instrument, it is the organ of the world. It is a feeling breathed in the souls for it all to resound in them! Should it be astonishing to us that this language has light, images, and melodies, in place of words?

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
Death, with funereal shades in vain surrounds me, My reason through his darkness seeth light: 'Tis the last step which brings me close to Thee: 'Tis the veil falling, 'twixt Thy face and mine.

Alphonse de Lamartine
Eternity is so certain and so terrible that a thousand lives would not suffice to prepare for it.

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
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
Hence life, as through a cloud, for me I see Vanish, and to the past's dark shade 'tis chas'd; As a grand image love remains to me-- Sole remnant of a dream, by morn effac'd.

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

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
We are earth's children, and life is the same in sap as in blood; all that the earth, our mother, feels and expresses to the eye by her form and aspect, in melancholy or in splendor, finds an echo within us.

Alphonse de Lamartine
Every time that a people which has long crouched in slavery and ignorance is moved to its lowest depths there appear monsters and heroes, prodigies of crime and prodigies of virtue.

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

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
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
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
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
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.

Alphonse de Lamartine
Time is a great ocean which, like the other ocean, overflows with our remains.

Alphonse de Lamartine
To kill animals for the purpose of feeding on their flesh is one of the most deplorable and shameful infirmities of the human state

Alphonse de Lamartine