C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Lamartine
A woman’s strength is most potent when robed in gentleness.
After his blood, that which a man can next give out of himself is a tear.
All our tastes are but reminiscences.
An artist should have more than two eyes.
Argument should be politic as well as logical.
Assassination makes only martyrs, not converts.
At twenty every one is republican.
Barbarism recommences by the excess of civilization.
Before this century shall run out, journalism will be the whole press. Mankind will write their book day by day, hour by hour, page by page. Thought will spread abroad with the rapidity of light—instantly conceived, instantly written, instantly understood at the extremeties of the earth.
Bounded in his nature, infinite in his desires, man is a fallen god who has a recollection of heaven.
Chance often gives us that which we should not have presumed to ask.
Civil wars leave nothing but tombs.
Eloquence dwells quite as much in the hearts of the hearers as on the lips of the orator.
Enthusiasm is the intoxication of earnestness.
Enthusiasm springs from the imagination, and self-sacrifice from the heart. Women are, therefore, more naturally heroic than men. All nations have in their annals some of these miracles of patriotism, of which woman is the instrument in the hands of God.
Esteem incites friendship, but not love; the former is the twin brother of Reverence; the latter is the child of Equality.
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.
Experience is the only prophecy of wise men.
Exquisite beauty resides rather in the female form than face, where it is also more lasting.
Fiction is the microscope of truth.
God has placed the genius of women in their hearts, because the works of this genius are always works of love.
Good manners require space and time.
Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can; and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys.
History is neither more nor less than biography on a large scale.
History teaches everything, even the future.
I scarcely exceed the middle age of man; yet between infancy and maturity I have seen ten revolutions!
Ideas are pitiless.
Ink is the transcript of thought.
Inspiration is solitary, never consecutive.
It is admirably to die the victim of one’s faith; it is sad to die the dupe of one’s ambition.
It is in the heart that God has placed the genius of women, because the works of this genius are all works of love.
It is the qualities of the heart, not those of the face, that should attract us in women, because the former are durable, the latter transitory. So lovable women, like roses, retain their sweetness long after they have lost their beauty.
Joy is a flame which association alone can keep alive, and which goes out unless communicated.
Joyousness is Nature’s garb of health.
Kindness is virtue itself.
Let us enjoy the fugitive hour. Man has no harbor, time has no shore; it rushes on, and carries us with it.
Life is too short to spare an hour of it in the indulgence of this evil passion.
Love of country produces among men such examples as Cincinnatus, Alfred, Washington—pure, unselfish, symmetrical; among women, Vittoria, Colonna, Madame Roland, Charlotte Corday, Jeanne Darc—romantic devoted, marvelous.
Man is born barbarous—he is ransomed from the condition of beasts only by being cultivated.
Man, man, is thy brother, and thy father is God.
Men are misers, and women prodigal, in affection.
Modesty and dew love the shade.
Mystery hovers over all things here below.
Nature has given women two painful but heavenly gifts, which distinguish them, and often raise them above human nature,—compassion and enthusiasm. By compassion, they devote themselves; by enthusiasm they exalt themselves.
Newspapers will ultimately engross all literature.
One can see him [Thiers] think through his skin.
Philosophy is the rational expression of genius.
Poetry has been the guardian angel of humanity in all ages.
Poetry is the morning dream of great minds.
Providence conceals itself in the details of human affairs, but becomes unveiled in the generalities of history.
Radicalism is but the desperation of logic.
Religions are not proved, are not demonstrated, are not established, are not overthrown by logic! They are of all the mysteries of nature and the human mind, the most mysterious and most inexplicable; they are of instinct and not of reason.
Republicanism and ignorance are in bitter antagonism.
Sentiment is the poetry of the imagination.
Silence and simplicity obtrude on no one, but are yet two unequaled attractions in woman.
Silence,—the applause of real and durable impressions.
The attractiveness that exists to man in the very helplessness of woman is scarcely realized.
The death of a man’s wife is like cutting down an ancient oak that has long shaded the family mansion. Henceforth the glare of the world, with its cares and vicissitudes, falls upon the old widower’s heart, and there is nothing to break their force, or shield him from the full weight of misfortune. It is as if his right hand were withered; as if one wing of his angel was broken, and every movement that he made brought him to the ground.
The flowers are but earth vivified.
The greatness of a popular character is less according to the ratio of his genius than the sympathy he shows with the prejudices and even the absurdities of his time. Fanatics do not select the cleverest, but the most fanatical leaders; as was evidenced in the choice of Robespierre by the French Jacobins, and in that of Cromwell by the English Puritans.
The impartiality of history is not that of the mirror, which merely reflects objects, but of the judge, who sees, listens, and decides.
The loss of a mother is always keenly felt, even if her health be such as to incapacitate her from taking an active part in the care of the family. She is the sweet rallying-point for affection, obedience, and a thousand tendernesses. Dreary the blank when she is withdrawn!
The most effective coquetry is innocence.
The reason that women are so much more sociable than men is because they act more from the heart than the intellect.
There is a woman at the beginning of all great things.
Thou makest the man, O Sorrow!—yes, the whole man,—as the crucible gold.
Time is a great ocean which, like the other ocean, overflows with our remains.
To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic.
Treason, which begins by being cautious, ends by betraying itself.
True greatness is sovereign wisdom. We are never deceived by our virtues.
True love is the ripe fruit of a lifetime.
Unanimity is the mistress of strength.
Virginity is the poetry, not the reality, of life.
Void of freedom, what would virtue be?
When the press is the echo of sages and reformers, it works well; when it is the echo of turbulent cynics, it merely feeds political excitement.
Women have much more heart and much more imagination than men; hence, fancy often allures them.