Alfred de Vigny
Alfred de Vigny
Alfred Victor, Comte de Vignywas a French poet and early leader of French Romanticism. He also produced novels, plays, and translations of Shakespeare. Unlike many of the French Romantics, Vigny was an army officer with conservative and consistently royalist views...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth27 March 1797
CountryFrance
children hero use
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
real civilization details
What it values most of all is the sum total of events and the advance of civilization, which carries individuals along with it; but, indifferent to details, it cares less to have them real than noble or, rather, grand and complete.
foolish
Hope is the biggest of our foolish things.
heart thinking two
We shall find in our troubled hearts, where discord reigns, two needs which seem at variance, but which merge, as I think, in a common source - the love of the true, and the love of the fabulous.
mean sacred-things shame
Honour is manly decency. The shame of being found wanting in it means everything to us. Is this, then, the indefinable, the sacred thing?
heart progress analysis
The study of social progress is to-day not less needed in literature than is the analysis of the human heart.
drama destiny men
France, for example, loves at the same time history and the drama, because the one explores the vast destinies of humanity, and the other the individual lot of man.
art relation ideals
Art ought never to be considered except in its relations with its ideal beauty.
brain disease poetry-is
Poetry is the disease of the brain.
war men soldier
The existence of the soldier, next to capital punishment, is the most grievous vestige of barbarism which survives among men.
essence heaven despair
A calm despair, without angry convulsions or reproaches directed at heaven, is the essence of wisdom.
maturity intention
What is a great life but a youthful intention carried out in maturity?
suffering majesty human-suffering
I love the majesty of human suffering.
stupid order understanding
I admit that I myself am far from having a complete command of every topic I touch on, but my knowledge of my subject is always greater than the interest or the understanding of my auditors. You see, there is one very good thing about mankind; the mediocre masses make very few demands of the mediocrities of a higher order, submitting stupidly and cheerfully to their guidance