Quotes from Alphonse de Lamartine

Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can; and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys.

Life is too short to spare an hour of it in the indulgence of this evil passion.

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.

When a dog is in your life, there is always a reason to laugh.

Virginity is the poetry, not the reality, of life.

What is our life but a succession of preludes to that unknown song whose first solemn note is sounded by death?

Good manners require space and time.

Every time that a people which has long crouched in slavery and ignorance is moved to its lowest depths there appear monsters and heroes, prodigies of crime and prodigies of virtue.

Let us enjoy the fugitive hour. Man has no harbor, time has no shore; it rushes on, and carries us with it.

Private passions tire and exhaust themselves, public ones never.

Let us love the passing hour, let us hurry up and enjoy our time.

Time is a great ocean which, like the other ocean, overflows with our remains.

Ah! let us love, my Love, for Time is heartless, Be happy while you may!

Man hath no Heaven and Time's coast is chartless. He speeds; we pass away!

Sometimes, only one person is missing, and the whole world seems depopulated.

Modesty and dew love the shade.

Limited in his nature, infinite in his desire, man is a fallen god who remembers heaven.

There is no man more complete than the one who travelled a lot, who changed the shape of his thoughts and his life twenty times.

If one had but a single glance to give the world one should gaze on Istanbul.

True love is the ripe fruit of a lifetime.

Esteem incites friendship, but not love; the former is the twin brother of Reverence; the latter is the child of Equality.

Fiction is the microscope of truth.

It is for truth that God created genius.

I am the fellow citizen of every being that thinks; my country is Truth.