Best 105 quotes of Alphonse De Lamartine on MyQuotes

A conscience without God is like a court without a judge.

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

Ah! let us love, my Love, for Time is heartless, Be happy while you may!

All nature is the temple; earth the altar.

An artist should have more than two eyes.

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.

Argument should be polite as well as logical.

At twenty every one is republican.

Barbarism recommences by the excess of civilization.

Before this century shall run out, journalism will be the whole press. Mankind will write their book day by day, hour by hour, page by page. Thought will spread abroad with the rapidity of light--instantly conceived, instantly written, instantly understood at the extremities of the earth.

Brutality to an animal is cruelty to mankind - it is only the difference in the victim.

But Nature too, shakes off her sleep today; By May's mild sun we see reviv'd her frame, Around my window Venus' birds proclaim, The month most cherish'd backwards bends his way!

Civil wars leave nothing but tombs.

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.

Eloquence dwells quite as much in the hearts of the hearers as on the lips of the orator.

Enthusiasm is the intoxication of earnestness.

Enthusiasm springs from the imagination, and self-sacrifice from the heart. Women are, therefore, more naturally heroic than men. All nations have in their annals some of these miracles of patriotism, of which woman is the instrument in the hands of God.

Esteem incites friendship, but not love; the former is the twin brother of Reverence; the latter is the child of Equality.

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

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.

Experience is the only prophecy of wise men.

Exquisite beauty resides rather in the female form than face, where it is also more lasting.

Fiction is the microscope of truth.

France is revolutionary or she is nothing at all. The revolution of1789 is her political religion.

Friendship, sweet-resting place of the soul, the gloaming wherein our hearts find peace.

Good manners require space and time.

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

Habit with it's iron sinews, clasps us and leads us day by day.

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.

History is neither more nor less than biography on a large scale.

I am persuaded that if the brutes even--if the dog, the horse, the ox, the elephant, the bird, could speak, they would confess, that, at the bottom of their nature, their instincts, their sensations, their obtuse intelligence, assisted by organs less perfect than ours, there is a clouded, secret sentiment of this existence of a superior and primordial Being, from whom all emanates, and to whom all returns.

I am the fellow citizen of every being that thinks; my country is Truth.

If God is thy father, human beings are thy brothers and sisters.

If greatness of purpose, smallness of means, and astonishing results are the three criteria of a human genius, who could dare compare any great man in history with Muhammad? The most famous men created arms, laws, and empires only. They founded, if anything at all, no more than material powers which often crumbled away before their eyes. This man moved not only armies, legislations, empires, peoples, dynasties, but millions of men in one-third of the then inhabited world; and more than that, he moved the altars, the gods, the religions, the ideas, the beliefs and the souls.

If one had but a single glance to give the world, one should gaze on Istanbul.

If they say "you have your last chance to look at the world", I wish that look would from Çamlıca of Istanbul.

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!

Inspiration is solitary, never consecutive.

I say to this night: "Pass more slowly"; and the dawn will come to dispel the night.

It is admirable to die the victim of one's faith; it is sad to die the dupe of one's ambition.

It is because of the servility of photography that I am fundamentally contemptuous of this chance invention which will never be an art but which plagiarizes nature by means of optics. (1848)

It is in the habits of lawyers that every accusation appears insufficient if they do not exaggerate it even to calumny; it is thus that justice itself loses its sanctity and its respect amongst men.

It is the qualities of the heart, not those of the face, that should attract us in women, because the former are durable, the latter transitory. So lovable women, like roses, retain their sweetness long after they have lost their beauty.

Joy is a flame which association alone can keep alive, and which goes out unless communicated.

Let us enjoy the fugitive hour. Man has no harbor, time has no shore; it rushes on, and carries us with it.

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

Let us savour the swift delights of the most beautiful of our days!

Life is too short to spare an hour of it in the indulgence of this evil passion.

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

Love is the enchanted dawn of every heart.