Alphonse de Lamartine quotes

Alphonse de Lamartine was a French poet, writer, and politician, recognized as a leading figure of the Romantic movement. His literary works profoundly influenced French poetry and inspired social and political thought. He played a key role in the 1848 Revolution and advocated for democracy and human rights. Here are 32 of his quotes:

Sometimes, only one person is missing, and the whole world seems depopulated. (Alphonse de Lamartine)
To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic. View quote
Alphonse de Lamartine
Experience is the only prophecy of wise men. View quote
Alphonse de Lamartine
Limited in his nature, infinite in his desire, man is a fallen god who remembers heaven. View quote
Alphonse de Lamartine
The more I see of the representatives of the people, the more I admire my dogs. View quote
Alphonse de Lamartine
God - but a word invoked to explain the world. View quote
Alphonse de Lamartine
Utopias are often only premature truths. View quote
Alphonse de Lamartine
Let us love the passing hour, let us hurry up and enjoy our time. View quote
Alphonse de Lamartine
I say to this night: "Pass more slowly"; and the dawn will come to dispel the night. View quote
Alphonse de Lamartine
What is our life but a succession of preludes to that unknown song whose first solemn note is sounded by death? View quote
Alphonse de Lamartine
There is a woman at the beginning of all great things. (Alphonse de Lamartine)
A conscience without God is like a court without a judge. View quote
Alphonse de Lamartine
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? View quote
Alphonse de Lamartine
If one had but a single glance to give the world, one should gaze on Istanbul. View quote
Alphonse de Lamartine
Poets and heroes are of the same race, the latter do what the former conceive. View quote
Alphonse de Lamartine
Love alone was left, as a great image of a dream that was erased. View quote
Alphonse de Lamartine
Until the age of twelve, then, I only lived on bread, milk-food, vegetables, and fruit. My health was not less robust on this account, nor my growth less rapid, and it was to this diet, perhaps, that I was indebted for that purity of feature, that exquisite sensibility of feeling, and that serene gentleness of humor and character which I had preserved up to that period. View quote
Alphonse de Lamartine
The doctrine of the cynics is the Ideal reversed, the parody of physical and moral beauty, the crime of mind, the degradation of imagination. I could not take pleasure in it. There was too much enthusiasm within me to permit me to crawl through those sinks of the brain. My nature had wings. The dangers to which I was exposed were above, not below. View quote
Alphonse de Lamartine
O time, arrest your flight! and you, propitious hours, arrest your course! Let us savor the fleeting delights of our most beautiful days! View quote
Alphonse de Lamartine
The very eagle, destined to soar so high and to see so far, begins his life in the fissures of the rocks, and in his early days only sees the arid and sometimes fetid borders of his eyry. View quote
Alphonse de Lamartine
My mother took me to town with her, and made me pass, as if by accident, through the yard of a slaughter-house. I saw some men, their arms naked and besmeared with blood, knocking a bull in the head; others cutting the throats of calves and sheep, and separating their still heaving limbs. Streams of smoking gore ran along the pavement. An intense feeling of pity, mingled with horror, seized upon me. I asked to be led away quickly. The thought of these scenes, the necessary preliminaries of one of those dishes of meat which I had so often seen on the table, made me take a disgust to animal food and inspired me with a horror for butchers. (Alphonse de Lamartine)
Silence is the winding-sheet of the past: it is sometimes impious, often dangerous to raise it. But even when it is raised piously and lovingly, the first moment is a cruel one. View quote
Alphonse de Lamartine
My God! I have often regretted that I was born! I have often wished to fall back even into nothingness, rather than advance through so many falsehoods, so many sufferings, and so many successive losses, towards that loss of ourselves which we call death! Still, even in those moments of terrible faintheartedness, when despair overmasters reason, and when man forgets that life is a task imposed upon him to finish, I have always said to myself: "There are some things which I would regret not to have tasted - a mother's milk, a father's love, that relationship of heart and soul between brothers, household affections, joys, and even cares!" Our family is evidently our second self, more than self, existing before self, and surviving self with the better part of self. It is the image of the holy and loving unity of beings revealed by the small group of creatures who hold to one another, and made visible by feeling! View quote
Alphonse de Lamartine
Love is the enchanted dawn of every heart. View quote
Alphonse de Lamartine
Music is the literature of the heart; it commences where speech ends. View quote
Alphonse de Lamartine