Talk:Alphonse de Lamartine

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

• Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can; and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys.

• If one had but a single glance to give the world, one should gaze on Istanbul.

• Private passions tire and exhaust themselves, public ones never.

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

• There is a woman at the begining of all great things.

• Our only truth is our sorrow.

• What crime have we commited in order to be born?

• God is nothing but a dream word, in order to explain the existence of the world.

• I am tired of museums - these cemeteries of art.

• • Le livre de la vie est le livre suprême
  • Qu'on ne peut ni fermer ni rouvrir à son choix;
  • Le passage attachant ne s'y lit pas deux fois,
  • Mais le feuillet fatal se tourne de lui-même:
  • On voudrait revenir à la page où l'on aime,
  • Et la page où l'on meurt est déjà sous nos doigts!

• • The book of life is the supreme book
  • that one can neither close nor reopen at will;
  • the interesting passage cannot be read twice,
  • but the fatal leaf turns by itself:
  • we would like to return to the page where we love,
  • and the page where we die is already under our fingers.

• • • Source: French song from Berlioz to Duparc: the origin and development of the mélodie, p. 323; 1988.

Translation needed

• Homme ou Dieu, tout génie est promis au martyre:
  Du supplice plus tard on baise l'instrument.
  • Ferrare