Widger's Quotes and Images from The Confession of a Child of the Century by Alfred de Musset The French Immortals: Quotes and Images

Part 1

Chapter 1699 wordsPublic domain

This eBook was produced by David Widger

THE CHILD OF A CENTURY

By Alfred de Musset

A terrible danger lurks in the knowledge of what is possible

Accustomed to call its disguise virtue

Adieu, my son, I love you and I die

All philosophy is akin to atheism

All that is not life, it is the noise of life

And when love is sure of itself and knows response

Because you weep, you fondly imagine yourself innocent

Become corrupt, and you will cease to suffer

Began to forget my own sorrow in my sympathy for her

Beware of disgust, it is an incurable evil

Can any one prevent a gossip

Cold silence, that negative force

Contrive to use proud disdain as a shield

Death is more to be desired than a living distaste for life

Despair of a man sick of life, or the whim of a spoiled child

Do they think they have invented what they see

Each one knows what the other is about to say

Fool who destroys his own happiness

Force itself, that mistress of the world

Funeral processions are no longer permitted

Galileo struck the earth, crying: "Nevertheless it moves!"

Good and bad days succeeded each other almost regularly

Great sorrows neither accuse nor blaspheme--they listen

Grief itself was for her but a means of seducing

Happiness of being pursued

He who is loved by a beautiful woman is sheltered from every blow

He lives only in the body

How much they desire to be loved who say they love no more

Human weakness seeks association

I can not be near you and separated from you at the same moment

I can not love her, I can not love another

I boasted of being worse than I really was

I neither love nor esteem sadness

I do not intend either to boast or abase myself

Ignorance into which the Greek clergy plunged the laity

In what do you believe?

Indignation can solace grief and restore happiness

Is he a dwarf or a giant

Is it not enough to have lived?

It is a pity that you must seek pastimes

Make a shroud of your virtue in which to bury your crimes

Man who suffers wishes to make her whom he loves suffer

Men doubted everything: the young men denied everything

No longer esteemed her highly enough to be jealous of her

Of all the sisters of love, the most beautiful is pity

Perfection does not exist

Pure caprice that I myself mistook for a flash of reason

Quarrel had been, so to speak, less sad than our reconciliation

Reading the Memoirs of Constant

Resorted to exaggeration in order to appear original

Sceptic regrets the faith he has lost the power to regain

Seven who are always the same: the first is called hope

She pretended to hope for the best

Sometimes we seem to enjoy unhappiness

Speak to me of your love, she said, "not of your grief

St. Augustine

Suffered, and yet took pleasure in it

Suspicions that are ever born anew

Terrible words; I deserve them, but they will kill me

There are two different men in you

Ticking of which (our arteries) can be heard only at night

"Unhappy man!" she cried, "you will never know how to love"

We have had a mass celebrated, and it cost us a large sum

What you take for love is nothing more than desire

What human word will ever express thy slightest caress

When passion sways man, reason follows him weeping and warning

Who has told you that tears can wash away the stains of guilt

Wine suffuses the face as if to prevent shame appearing there

You believe in what is said here below and not in what is done

You play with happiness as a child plays with a rattle

You turn the leaves of dead books

Your great weapon is silence

Youth is to judge of the world from first impressions

If you wish to read the entire context of any of these quotations, select a short segment and copy it into your clipboard memory--then open the appropriate eBook and paste the phrase into your computer's find or search operation.