Alfred de Vigny Quotes & Sayings

“Of what use is the memory of facts, if not to serve as an example of good or of evil?”

“Art ought never to be considered except in its relations with its ideal beauty.”

“We live in an age of universal investigation, and of exploration of the sources of all movements.”

“On the day when man told the story of his life to man, history was born.”

“Of what use were the arts if they were only the reproduction and the imitation of life?”

“I think, then, that man, after having satisfied his first longing for facts, wanted something fuller - some grouping, some adaptation to his capacity and experience, of the links of this vast chain of events which his sight could not take in.”

“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.”

“Just as we descend into our consciences to judge of actions which our minds can not weigh, can we not also search in ourselves for the feeling which gives birth to forms of thought, always vague and cloudy?”

“Do you not see with your own eyes the chrysalis fact assume by degrees the wings of fiction?”

“What is the use of theorizing as to wherein lies the charm that moves us?”