François-Auguste-René de Chateaubriand

How many other friends I will never meet again! Every night as he goes to bed, a man can count his losses; it’s only his years that do not leave him, though they pass.

Only one thing held my attention: the hands of a clock stopped at the minute that Frederick expired. I was deceived by the stillness of the image. The hours never suspend their flight; it is not man who stops time, but time who stops man. In the end it matters little what part we have played in life. The brilliance or obscurity of our doctrines, our wealth or poverty, our joy or pain: these things have no effect on the measure of our days. Whether the hand moves around a golden face or a wooden one, whether the dial fills the bezel of a ring or the rose window of a cathedral, the length of the hour is still the same.

Levantai-vos breve, ó desejadas tempestades que deveis transportas René para os céus de uma vida diferente,

As a precaution against boredom, my bitter enemy, it would have suited me to be a great, but unknown artist, using my talent only for the benefit of my solitude.

l'infortune personnelle est une compagne un peu froide, mais exigeante ; elle vous obsède ; elle ne laisse de place à aucun autre sentiment, ne vous quitte point, s'empare de vos genoux et de votre couche.

men don't allow themselves to be killed for their interest, they allow themselves to be killed for their passion

[L]ike a kingfisher I have made my nest on the waves.

Alexander created cities everywhere he passed: I have left dreams everywhere I have trailed my life.

Justice is the bread of the nation, it is always hungry for it.

Hesitating, at the threshold of various illusory paths of life, I considered them one by one, without daring to pursue any one of them.

Un jour le Meschacebé, encore assez près de sa source, se lassa de n'être qu'un limpide ruisseau. Il demande des neiges aux montagnes, des eaux aux torrents, des pluies aux tempêtes, il franchit ses rives, et désole ses bords charmants. L'orgueilleux ruisseau s'applaudit d'abord de sa puissance; mais voyant que tout devenait désert sur son passage; qu'il coulait, abandonné dans la solitude; que ses eaux étaient toujours troublées, il regretta l'humble lit que lui avait creusé la nature, les oiseaux, les fleurs, les arbres et les ruisseaux, jadis modestes compagnons de son paisible cours.

On n'est point un homme supérieur parce qu'on aperçoit le monde sous un jour odieux. On ne hait les hommes et la vie que faute de voir assez loin.

Imagination is rich, abundant, full of marvels, existence poor, dry, disenchanted. One inhabits, with a full heart, an empty world.

Chateaubriand was attached to the past and its centuries-old traditions, but he was also a liberal, open to modernity: this is one thing that sets him apart in the history of ideas. He had been repulsed by the discourse and the violence of the French revolutionaries and was deeply impressed by the powerful composure of George Washington, “the representative of the needs, ideas, intelligence, and opinions of his epoch.

My mother, Apolline de Bedée, endowed with great wit and a prodigious imagination, was formed by reading Fénelon, Racine, and Madame de Sévigné. She was nourished on anecdotes of the Court of Louis XIV and knew all of Cyrus by heart. A small woman of large features, dark-haired and ugly, her elegant manners and lively disposition were at odds with my father’s rigidity and calm. Loving society as much as he loved solitude, as exuberant and animated as he was expressionless and cold, she possessed no taste not antagonistic to the tastes of her husband.