156 Quotes by Alphonse de Lamartine

Love of country produces among men such examples as Cincinnatus, Alfred, Washington – pure, unselfish, symmetrical; among women, Vittoria Colonna, Madame Roland, Charlotte Corday, Jeanne Darc – romantic, devoted, marvelous.

Nature has given women two painful but heavenly gifts, which distinguish them, and often raise them above human nature, – compassion and enthusiasm. By compassion, they devote themselves; by enthusiasm they exalt themselves.

I say to this night: “Pass more slowly”; and the dawn will come to dispel the night.

We are earth’s children, and life is the same in sap as in blood; all that the earth, our mother, feels and expresses to the eye by her form and aspect, in melancholy or in splendor, finds an echo within us.

Thou makest the man, O Sorrow! – yes, the whole man, – as the crucible gold.

Too much I’ve seen, and felt, and lov’d in life, Living I come to seek Lethaean calm; Let me, fair scenes! forget all worldly strife, Oblivion solely is my bosom’s balm.

Brutality to an animal is cruelty to mankind – it is only the difference in the victim.

Habit with it’s iron sinews, clasps us and leads us day by day.

God – but a word invoked to explain the world.