Alfred de Musset Quotes

Alfred de Musset offers lyrical, wistful reflections on love, art and the ache of time, perfect for anyone craving poetic solace.

21 quotes

1. As all the perfumes of the vanished day Rise from the earth still moistened with the dew So from my chastened soul beneath thy ray Old love is born anew.

2. Great artists have no country.

3. Je suis venu trop tard dans un monde trop vieux. (I have come too late into a world too old.)

4. Je ne sais ou va mon chemin, mais je marche mieux quand ma main serre la tienne. ('A mon frere revenant d'Italie', mars 1844)

5. Quel que soit le souci que ta jeunesse endure, Laisse-la s'elargir, cette sainte blessure Que les noirs seraphins t'ont faite au fond du coeur ; Rien ne nous rend si grands qu'une grande douleur Mais, pour en etre atteint, ne crois pas, o poete Que ta voix ici-bas doive rester muette. Les plus deseperes sont les chants les plus beaux, Et j'en sais d'immortels qui sont de purs sanglots. ('La Nuit de Mai', 1835)

6. On est souvent trompe en amour, souvent blesse et souvent malheureux; mais on aime, et quand on est sur le bord de sa tombe, on se retourne pour regarder en arriere et on se dit : j'ai souffert souvent, je me suis trompe quelquefois, mais j'ai aime. C'est moi qui ai vecu, et non pas un etre factice cree par mon orgueil et mon ennui. (Acte II, Scene V)

7. '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' (this quotation is useful for explanations of the period of art nouveau, and the causes of the art movement)

8. 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!

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

10. The mouth keeps silent to hear the heart speak.

11. The costliest women are the ones who cost nothing.

12. I don't know where my road is going, but I know that I walk better when I hold your hand.

13. 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.

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

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

16. Christianity ruined emperors, but saved peoples.

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

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

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

20. Things they don't understand always cause a sensation among the English.

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