George Sand Quotes

"[On Chopin's Preludes:]

"His genius was filled with the mysterious sounds of nature, but transformed into sublime equivalents in musical thought, and not through slavish imitation of the actual external sounds. His composition of that night was surely filled with raindrops, resounding clearly on the tiles of the Charterhouse, but it had been transformed in his imagination and in his song into tears falling upon his heart from the sky. ... The gift of Chopin is [the expression of] the deepest and fullest feelings and emotions that have ever existed. He made a single instrument speak a language of infinity. He could often sum up, in ten lines that a child could play, poems of a boundless exaltation, dramas of unequalled power.

L'art de voyager, c'est presque la science de la vie.

I don't know why, but any thought of the future upsets me intolerably. So I had to turn and look back at certain aspects of the past, and only then did I recover my calm. I thought of our friendship and was overcome by guilt at having allowed so much bitterness to invade my wretched heart. I recalled the joys and sorrows we had shared. Both are so dear to me that I began to sob like a woman when I remembered them.

La nature est une oeuvre d'art, mais Dieu est le seul artiste qui existe, et l'homme n'est qu'un arrangeur de mauvais goût. La nature est belle, le sentiment s'exhale de tous ses pores; l'amour, la jeunesse, la beauté y sont impérissables. Mais l'homme n'a pour les sentir et les exprimer que des moyens absurdes et des facultés misérables. Il vaudrait mieux qu'il ne s'en mêlat pas, qu'il fût muet et se renfermât dans la contemplation.

j'ai bien senti le beau dans le simple,

By prayer I do not mean a chosen arrangement of words cast toward heaven, but a silent conversation with an ideal of luminous perfection."

The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart.

¡Dejadme escapar de la mentirosa y criminal ilusión de la felicidad!
Dadme trabajo, cansancio, dolor y entusiasmo.

La vie est une longue blessure qui s'endort rarement et ne se guérit jamais.

Le plus heureux des hommes serait celui qui, possédant la science de son labeur, et travaillant de ses mains, puisant le bien-être et la liberté dans l'exercice de sa force intelligente, aurait le temps de vivre par le cur et par le cerveau, de comprendre son uvre et d'aimer celle de Dieu.

L'art est une démonstration dont la nature est la preuve.

Talent , will , genius are natural phenomena like the lake , the volcano , the mountain , the wind , the star , the cloud .

The old woman I shall become will be quite different from the woman I am now. Another I is beginning.

All our days are the same; they are all calm and beautiful; they pass swiftly and purely like those of our childhood.

[...], no había sido educada por nadie; se debía a sí misma el ser lo que era, y no hallando en su familia verdaderas simpatías, había adquirido el gusto del estudio y de la meditación. Su talento naturalmente claro, su juicio siempre recto la habían preservado igualmente de los errores de la sociedad y de los del aislamiento.