Alfred De Vigny

I have a private theory, Sir, that there are no heroes and no monsters in this world. Only children should be allowed to use these words

The existence of the soldier, next to capital punishment, is the most grievous vestige of barbarism which survives among men.

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.

History is a novel for which the people is the author.

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

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

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

The first among mankind will always be those who make something imperishable out of a sheet of paper, a canvas, a piece of marble, or a few sounds

To hold power has always meant to manipulate idiots and circumstances; and those circumstances and those idiots, tossed together, bring about those coincidences to which even the greatest men confess they owe most of their fame

Oh, I have a habit of letting myself be lectured on the things I know best. I like to see if they are understood in the same way I understand; for there are many ways of knowing the same thing