I think, then, that man, after having satisfied his first longing for facts, wanted something fuller – some grouping, some adaptation to his capacity and experience, of the links of this vast chain of events which his sight could not take in. Alfred de Vigny Read Quote
Of what use is the memory of facts, if not to serve as an example of good or of evil? Alfred de Vigny Read Quote
Do you know that charming part of our country which has been called the garden of France – that spot where, amid verdant plains watered by wide streams, one inhales the purest air of heaven? Alfred de Vigny Read Quote
But it is the province of religion, of philosophy, of pure poetry only, to go beyond life, beyond time, into eternity. Alfred de Vigny Read Quote
Art ought never to be considered except in its relations with its ideal beauty. Alfred de Vigny Read Quote
From this, without doubt, sprang the fable. Man created it thus, because it was not given him to see more than himself and nature, which surrounds him; but he created it true with a truth all its own. Alfred de Vigny Read Quote
France, for example, loves at the same time history and the drama, because the one explores the vast destinies of humanity, and the other the individual lot of man. Alfred de Vigny Read Quote
What it values most of all is the sum total of events and the advance of civilization, which carries individuals along with it; but, indifferent to details, it cares less to have them real than noble or, rather, grand and complete. Alfred de Vigny Read Quote
We shall find in our troubled hearts, where discord reigns, two needs which seem at variance, but which merge, as I think, in a common source – the love of the true, and the love of the fabulous. Alfred de Vigny Read Quote
One might almost reckon mathematically that, having undergone the double composition of public opinion and of the author, their history reaches us at third hand and is thus separated by two stages from the original fact. Alfred de Vigny Read Quote