Alfred De Vigny Quotes

Hope is the greatest madness. What can we expect of a world that we enter with the assurance of seeing our fathers and mothers die? A world where, if two beings love each other and give their lives to each other, both can be sure that one will watch the other perish?

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Oh, I have a habit of letting myself be lectured on the things I know best. I like to see if they are understood in the same way I understand; for there are many ways of knowing the same thing

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Observe this fact: in the history of mankind, every ruler who has lacked personal greatness has been forced to compensate for the deficiency by setting up the executioner at his right hand like a guardian angel

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Those intellectuals are our natural enemies; the only kind who are worth anything are the musicians and the dancers: they don’t insult anybody with their performances, and they neither sing nor dance politics. So I like them; but don’t let me hear a word about the rest

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I have a private theory, Sir, that there are no heroes and no monsters in this world. Only children should be allowed to use these words

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To hold power has always meant to manipulate idiots and circumstances; and those circumstances and those idiots, tossed together, bring about those coincidences to which even the greatest men confess they owe most of their fame

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One is always a good master when one isn’t the master

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The first among mankind will always be those who make something imperishable out of a sheet of paper, a canvas, a piece of marble, or a few sounds

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