Quotes from Alphonse de Lamartine

Experience is the only prophecy of wise men.

Women have much more heart and much more imagination than men; hence, fancy often allures them.

It is in the habits of lawyers that every accusation appears insufficient if they do not exaggerate it even to calumny; it is thus that justice itself loses its sanctity and its respect amongst men.

Man is God by his faculty for thought.

Music is the literature of the heart; it commences where speech ends.

All nature is the temple; earth the altar.

It is because of the servility of photography that I am fundamentally contemptuous of this chance invention which will never be an art but which plagiarizes nature by means of optics. (1848)

Friendship, sweet-resting place of the soul, the gloaming wherein our hearts find peace.

Philosophy is the rational expression of genius.

History teaches everything, even the future.

Sentiment is the poetry of the imagination.

Poetry has been the guardian angel of humanity in all ages.

Poetry is the morning dream of great minds.

Limited in his nature, infinite in his desires, man is a fallen god who remembers the heavens.

A conscience without God is like a court without a judge.

If God is thy father, human beings are thy brothers and sisters.

God - but a word invoked to explain the world.

Soul of the universe, Sire, God, Creator, Lord, I believe in Thee, 'neath all these names: And without having need to hear thy word, In the sky's brow my glorious creed I trace.

What mortal is there, over whose first joys and happiness does not break some storm, dispelling with its icy breath his fanciful illusions, and shattering his altar?

Providence conceals itself in the details of human affairs, but becomes unveiled in the generalities of history.

The more I see of the representatives of the people, the more I admire my dogs.

Poets and heroes are of the same race, the latter do what the former conceive.

Kindness is virtue itself.

The more I see of the representatives of the people, the more I admire my dogs.