28 quotes
I am Bourbon as a matter of honour, royalist according to reason and conviction, and republican by taste and character.
De la restauration et de la monarchie élective (1831)
The original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.
As soon as a true thought has entered our mind, it gives a light which makes us see a crowd of other objects which we have never perceived before.
In living literature no person is a competent judge but of works written in his own language.
I have explored the seas of the Old World and the New, and trodden the soil of the four quarters of the Earth.
Mémoires d'outre-tombe (1848)
The original style is not the style which never borrows of any one, but that which no other person is capable of reproducing.
One is not superior merely because one sees the world as odious.
How small man is on this little atom where he dies! But how great his intelligence!
Mémoires d'outre-tombe (1848)
After the misfortune of being born, I do not know any greater than giving birth.
One does not learn how to die by killing others.
Mémoires d'outre-tombe (1848)
I behold the light of a dawn whose sunrise I shall never see. It only remains for me to sit down at the edge of my grave; then I shall descend boldly, crucifix in hand, into eternity.
Mémoires d'outre-tombe (1848)
The original writer is not he who refrains from imitating others, but he who can be imitated by none.
Le génie du Christianisme (1802)
There is no religion without mysteries. God Himself is the great secret of Nature.
The scenes of tomorrow no longer concern me; they call for other artists: your turn, gentlemen!
Mémoires d'outre-tombe (1848)
Achilles exists only through Homer. Take away the art of writing from this world, and you will probably take away its glory.
Les Natchez (1826)
My downfall made a great noise: those who appeared most satisfied criticized the manner of it.
Mémoires d'outre-tombe (1848)
Forests were the first temples of the Divinity, and it is in the forests that men have grasped the first idea of architecture.
Perfect works are rare, because they must be produced at the happy moment when taste and genius unite; and this rare conjuncture, like that of certain planets, appears to occur only after the revolution of several cycles, and only lasts for an instant.
Memory is often the attribute of stupidity; it generally belongs to heavy spirits whom it makes even heavier by the baggage it loads them down with.
Mémoires d'outre-tombe (1848)
Religion assures us that our afflictions shall have an end; she comforts us, she dries our tears, she promises us another life. On the contrary, in the abominable worship of atheism, human woes are the incense, death is the priest, a coffin the altar, and annihilation the Deity.
The Genius of Christianity (1802)