Best 64 quotes of Alfred De Musset on MyQuotes

A happy memory is perhaps on this earth truer than happiness itself.

Alas, everything that men say to one another is alike; the ideas they exchange are almost always the same, in their conversation. But inside all those isolated machines, what hidden recesses, what secret compartments! It is an entire world that each one carries within him, an unknown world that is born and dies in silence! What solitudes all these human bodies are!

A lively retrospect summons back to us once more our youth, with vivid reflex of its early joys and unstained pleasures.

Any cigar smoker is a friend, because I know how he feels.

As all the perfumes of the vanished dayRise from the earth still moistened with the dewSo from my chastened soul beneath thy rayOld love is born anew.

... but one loves, and when one is on the brink of death, one turns around to look backward, and one says to oneself: "I have often suffered, I have sometimes been wrong, but I have loved.

Christianity ruined emperors, but saved peoples.

Disgrace is the synonym of discovery.

Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content.

Few persons enjoy real liberty; we are all slaves to ideas or habits.

Great artists have no country.

Happiness may have but one night, as glory but one day.

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

I cannot help it - in spite of myself, infinity torments me.

I can't help it, the idea of the infinite torments me.

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.

I deeply wished I could make the stars all come down and breathe them; disappear in them

If love is a play, this play, as old as the world, fiasco or not, it is, all in all, the least bad thing that has so far been found. The roles are trite, I admit, but if the play had no value the whole universe wouldn’t know it by heart

[I]f you are truly a man, sure of yourself and confident of your strength, you may taste of life without fear and without reserve; you may be sad or joyous, deceived or respected; but be sure you are loved, for what matters the rest?

If you are weak, dependent upon others, inclined to allow yourself to be dominated by opinion, to take root wherever you see a little soil, make for yourself a shield that will resist everything, for if you yield to your weaker nature you will not grow, you will dry up like a dead plant, and you will bear neither fruit nor flowers.

I have come too late into a world too old.

In love matters; keep your pen from paper.

In my flowery dreams there's always you. I do not regret it one bit.

I see that you believe in love such as the poets and romancers have represented... The poets represent love as the sculptors design beauty, as the musicians create melody; that is to say, endowed with an exquisite nervous organization, they gather up with discerning ardor the purest elements of life, the most beautiful lines of matter, and the most harmonious voices of nature.... To try to find in real life such love as this, eternal and absolute, is the same thing as to seek on the public squares such a woman as Venus or to expect nightingales to sing the symphonies of Beethoven.

Is is true that dictators never dream because they can change their smallest fantasies into realities if they want to?

It is easy to promise, and alas! How easy to forget!

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.

Know that there is often hidden in us a dormant poet, always young and alive.

Life is a sleep, love is a dream; and you have lived if you have loved.

life is a deep sleep of which love is the dream

Man is a pupil, pain is his teacher.

Nothing is a sin when you obey the orders of a priest

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.

One must not trifle with love

Partake of love as a temperate man partakes of wine; do not become intoxicated.

Perfection does not exist; to understand it is the triumph of human intelligence; to expect to possess it is the most dangerous kind of madness.

Romanticism is the abuse of adjectives

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.

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

Taxes are a universal burden in moral as well as in civil life. There is not a pleasure, social or otherwise, which is not assessed by fate at its full value!

The apartments of the rich are cabinets of curiosities: a conglomeration of classical antiquity, gothic, renaissance; Louis XIII... Something from every century but our own, a predicament that has arisen in no other period... so that we seem to be subsisting on the ruins of the past, as if the end of the world were near.

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

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.

The glass I drink from is not large, but at least it is my own.

The heart that once has been your shrine for other loves is too divine

The life of a devotee is a crusade of which the heart is the Holy Land.

The most despairing songs are the most beautiful, and I know some immortal ones that are pure tears.

The only true language in the world is a kiss.

The only truth is love beyond reason.

There are temptations more attractive than angels. Liberty, Patriotism, the good of humanity – words like that are the silver scales of the Tempter’s flaming wings