Alfred de Musset Quotes - Page 2

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

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

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

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.

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

Man is a pupil, pain is his teacher.

[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?

What I need is a woman who is something, anything: either very beautiful or very kind or in the last resort very wicked; very witty or very stupid, but something.

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

Romanticism is the abuse of adjectives

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

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

The return makes one love the farewell.

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

The soft contralto notes of a woman's voice are born in the immediate region of the heart.

There is no worse sorrow than remembering happiness in the day of sorrow.

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.

The most disagreeable thing that your worst enemy says to your face does not approach what your best friends say behind your back.

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

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.

Experience is the name men give to their follies or their sorrows.

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

One must not trifle with love

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.

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.