Alfred De Musset Quotes

How glorious it is -- and also how painful -- to be an exception.

I cannot help it - in spite of myself, infinity torments me.

Doubt, if you will, the being who loves you, Woman or dog, but never doubt love itself.

A lively retrospect summons back to us once more our youth, with vivid reflex of its early joys and unstained pleasures.

Perfection does not exist; to understand it is the triumph of human intelligence; to expect to possess it is the most dangerous kind of madness.

The only true language in the world is a kiss.

Reason may cure illusions, but not suffering.

What a frightful weapon is human thought! It is our defense and our safeguard, the most precious gift that God has made us. It is ours and it obeys us; we may launch it forth into space, but, once outside of our feeble brains, it is gone; we can no longer control it.

... but one loves, and when one is on the brink of death, one turns around to look backward, and one says to oneself: "I have often suffered, I have sometimes been wrong, but I have loved.

I deeply wished I could make the stars all come down and breathe them; disappear in them

I can't help it, the idea of the infinite torments me.

The mouth keeps silent to hear the heart speak.

Become corrupt, corrupt, and you will cease to suffer!" This has been the cry of all cities to man.

In my flowery dreams there's always you. I do not regret it one bit.

The most disagreeable thing that your worst enemy says to your face does not approach what your best friends say behind your back.

There is no worse sorrow than remembering happiness in the day of sorrow.

As all the perfumes of the vanished dayRise from the earth still moistened with the dewSo from my chastened soul beneath thy rayOld love is born anew.

I don't know where my road is going, but I know that I walk better when I hold your hand.

Great artists have no country.

Partake of love as a temperate man partakes of wine; do not become intoxicated.

Take time as it comes, the wind as it blows, woman as she is.

Things they don't understand always cause a sensation among the English.

Repartee is altogether a natural endowment, and is the lightning of the mind.

In love matters; keep your pen from paper.

Know that there is often hidden in us a dormant poet, always young and alive.

Christianity ruined emperors, but saved peoples.

Nothing is a sin when you obey the orders of a priest

The blood of my motherland waters a magic plant that cures all ills.

That plant is art, and sometimes art needs corruption as a kind of fertilizer

Look at the sun! It’s dry, it’s dead, it needs a drink, it wants blood! And I’ll give it blood!

Oh! my friend, when you feel bursting on your lips the vow of eternal love, do not be afraid to yield, but do not confound wine with intoxication; do not think the cup divine because the draft is of celestial flavor; do not be astonished to find it broken and empty in the evening.

Alas, everything that men say to one another is alike;

the ideas they exchange are almost always the same, in their conversation. But inside all those isolated machines, what hidden recesses, what secret compartments! It is an entire world that each one carries within him, an unknown world that is born and dies in silence! What solitudes all these human bodies are!

With a kiss let us set out for an unknown world.

If love is a play, this play, as old as the world, fiasco or not, it is, all in all, the least bad thing that has so far been found. The roles are trite, I admit, but if the play had no value the whole universe wouldn’t know it by heart

Experience is the name men give to their follies or their sorrows.

Few persons enjoy real liberty; we are all slaves to ideas or habits.

Memory is what makes us young or old.

The heart that once has been your shrine for other loves is too divine

The most despairing songs are the most beautiful, and I know some immortal ones that are pure tears.

The apartments of the rich are cabinets of curiosities: a conglomeration of classical antiquity, gothic, renaissance; Louis XIII... Something from every century but our own, a predicament that has arisen in no other period... so that we seem to be subsisting on the ruins of the past, as if the end of the world were near.

I could not clearly distinguish what was passing in my head;

it seemed to me that I was under the influence of a horrible dream and that I had but to awake to find myself cured; at times it seemed that my entire life had been a dream, ridiculous and childish, the falseness of which had just been disclosed.

Man is a pupil, pain is his teacher.

Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content.

It is easy to promise, and alas! How easy to forget!

Happiness may have but one night, as glory but one day.

Take love as a sober man takes wine; do not become a drunkard. If your mistress is sincere and faithful, love her for that; but if she is not, if she is merely young and beautiful, love her for that; if she is agreeable and spirituelle, love her for that; if she is none of these things but merely loves you, love her for that. Love does not come to us every day.

What I need is a woman who is something, anything: either very beautiful or very kind or in the last resort very wicked; very witty or very stupid, but something.

Life is a sleep, love is a dream; and you have lived if you have loved.

[I]f you are truly a man, sure of yourself and confident of your strength, you may taste of life without fear and without reserve; you may be sad or joyous, deceived or respected; but be sure you are loved, for what matters the rest?

Taxes are a universal burden in moral as well as in civil life.

There is not a pleasure, social or otherwise, which is not assessed by fate at its full value!

Any cigar smoker is a friend, because I know how he feels.