Alfred de Vigny Quotes

History is a novel whose author is the people.

Les acteurs sont bien heureux, ils ont une gloire sans responsabilité.

The loveliest Muse in the world does not feed her owner; these girls make fine mistresses but terrible wives

The soldier's lot is the most melancholy relic of barbarism (next to capital punishment) that lingers on among mankind.

Hope is the greatest madness. What can we expect of a world that we enter with the assurance of seeing our fathers and mothers die? A world where, if two beings love each other and give their lives to each other, both can be sure that one will watch the other perish?

Silence alone is great; all else is weakness.

Those intellectuals are our natural enemies; the only kind who are worth anything are the musicians and the dancers: they don’t insult anybody with their performances, and they neither sing nor dance politics. So I like them; but don’t let me hear a word about the rest

La presse est une bouche forcée d'être toujours ouverte et de parler toujours. De là vient qu'elle dit mille fois qu'elle n'a rien à dire.

Un livre est une bouteille jetée en pleine mer sur laquelle il faut coller cette étiquette: attrape qui peut.

I have a private theory, Sir, that there are no heroes and no monsters in this world. Only children should be allowed to use these words

To hold power has always meant to manipulate idiots and circumstances; and those circumstances and those idiots, tossed together, bring about those coincidences to which even the greatest men confess they owe most of their fame

In England the theatre has never been anything but a fashion for the upper classes or a debauch for the common people.

Actors are lucky, they have glory without responsibility.

Le Silence est la Poésie même pour moi.

One is always a good master when one isn’t the master