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
determined dream good lived men stronger time
Let us dream that once upon a time have lived men stronger and greater, who were more determined for good or for evil; that does us good.
analysis human less literature needed social study
The study of social progress is today not less needed in literature than is the analysis of the human heart.
memories evil use
Of what use is the memory of facts, if not to serve as an example of good or of evil?
heart phrases matter
No writer, no matter how gifted, immortalizes himself unless he has crystallized into expressive and original phrase the eternal sentiments and yearnings of the human heart.
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.
silence weakness silence-is
Only silence is great; all else is weakness.
life dream age
What is a great life? It is the dreams of youth realised in old age.
essence heaven despair
A calm despair, without angry convulsions or reproaches directed at heaven, is the essence of wisdom.
brain disease poetry-is
Poetry is the disease of the brain.
dream greatness age
Greatness is the dream of youth realized in old age.
people novel
History is a novel for which the people is the author.
nature men doubt
From this, without doubt, sprang the fable. Man created it thus, because it was not given him to see more than himself and nature, which surrounds him; but he created it true with a truth all its own.
fate long tasks
Perform your long and heavy task with energy, treading the path to which Fate has been pleased to call you.