Top 50 Alfred de Musset Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “I don’t know where my road is going, but I know that I walk better when I hold your hand.”

— Alfred de Musset

2. “The only truth is love beyond reason.”

— Alfred de Musset

3. “Perfection does not exist; to understand it is the triumph of human intelligence; to expect to possess it is the most dangerous kind of madness.”

— Alfred de Musset

4. “Take time as it comes, the wind as it blows, woman as she is.”

— Alfred de Musset

5. “Memory is what makes us young or old.”

— Alfred de Musset

6. “Life is a sleep, love is a dream; and you have lived if you have loved.”

— Alfred de Musset

7. “The only true language in the world is a kiss.”

— Alfred de Musset

8. “I have come too late into a world too old.”

— Alfred de Musset

9. “How glorious it is – and also how painful – to be an exception.”

— Alfred de Musset

10. “Any cigar smoker is a friend, because I know how he feels.”

— Alfred de Musset

11. “A happy memory is perhaps on this earth truer than happiness itself.”

— Alfred de Musset

12. “The return makes one love the farewell.”

— Alfred de Musset

13. “The mouth keeps silent to hear the heart speak.”

— Alfred de Musset

14. “The most disagreeable thing that your worst enemy says to your face does not approach what your best friends say behind your back.”

— Alfred de Musset

15. “Vanity and dignity are incompatible with each other; vain women are almost sure to be vulnerable.”

— Alfred de Musset

16. “The blood of my motherland waters a magic plant that cures all ills. That plant is art, and sometimes art needs corruption as a kind of fertilizer.”

— Alfred de Musset

17. “Man is a pupil, pain is his teacher.”

— Alfred de Musset

18. “Great artists have no country.”

— Alfred de Musset

19. “Know that there is often hidden in us a dormant poet, always young and alive.”

— Alfred de Musset

20. “Few persons enjoy real liberty; we are all slaves to ideas or habits.”

— Alfred de Musset

21. “One must not trifle with love.”

— Alfred de Musset

22. “What I need is a woman who is something, anything: either very beautiful or very kind or in the last resort very wicked; very witty or very stupid, but something.”

— Alfred de Musset

23. “There is no worse sorrow than remembering happiness in the day of sorrow.”

— Alfred de Musset

24. “What a frightful weapon is human thought! It is our defense and our safeguard, the most precious gift that God has made us. It is ours and it obeys us; we may launch it forth into space, but, once outside of our feeble brains, it is gone; we can no longer control it.”

— Alfred de Musset

25. “The soft contralto notes of a woman’s voice are born in the immediate region of the heart.”

— Alfred de Musset

26. “It is easy to promise, and alas! How easy to forget!”

— Alfred de Musset

27. “I can’t help it, the idea of the infinite torments me.”

— Alfred de Musset

28. “Things they don’t understand always cause a sensation among the English.”

— Alfred de Musset

29. “The glass I drink from is not large, but at least it is my own.”

— Alfred de Musset

30. “Look at the sun! It’s dry, it’s dead, it needs a drink, it wants blood! And I’ll give it blood!”

— Alfred de Musset

31. “Romanticism is the abuse of adjectives.”

— Alfred de Musset

32. “In my flowery dreams there’s always you. I do not regret it one bit.”

— Alfred de Musset

33. “With a kiss let us set out for an unknown world.”

— Alfred de Musset

34. “Disgrace is the synonym of discovery.”

— Alfred de Musset

35. “Oh! my friend, when you feel bursting on your lips the vow of eternal love, do not be afraid to yield, but do not confound wine with intoxication; do not think the cup divine because the draft is of celestial flavor; do not be astonished to find it broken and empty in the evening.”

— Alfred de Musset

36. “The life of a devotee is a crusade of which the heart is the Holy Land.”

— Alfred de Musset

37. “If love is a play, this play, as old as the world, fiasco or not, it is, all in all, the least bad thing that has so far been found. The roles are trite, I admit, but if the play had no value the whole universe wouldn’t know it by heart.”

— Alfred de Musset

38. “The costliest women are the ones who cost nothing.”

— Alfred de Musset

39. “Je connais peu les femmes; mais il me semble qu’il est difficile qu’on admire ce qu’on ne comprend pas.”

— Alfred de Musset

40. “As all the perfumes of the vanished dayRise from the earth still moistened with the dewSo from my chastened soul beneath thy rayOld love is born anew.”

— Alfred de Musset

41. “Happiness may have but one night, as glory but one day.”

— Alfred de Musset

42. “Repartee is altogether a natural endowment, and is the lightning of the mind.”

— Alfred de Musset

43. “The heart that once has been your shrine for other loves is too divine.”

— Alfred de Musset

44. “Is is true that dictators never dream because they can change their smallest fantasies into realities if they want to?”

— Alfred de Musset

45. “There are temptations more attractive than angels. Liberty, Patriotism, the good of humanity – words like that are the silver scales of the Tempter’s flaming wings.”

— Alfred de Musset

46. “The most despairing songs are the most beautiful, and I know some immortal ones that are pure tears.”

— Alfred de Musset

47. “Partake of love as a temperate man partakes of wine; do not become intoxicated.”

— Alfred de Musset

48. “I deeply wished I could make the stars all come down and breathe them; disappear in them.”

— Alfred de Musset

49. “Reason may cure illusions, but not suffering.”

— Alfred de Musset

50. “Taxes are a universal burden in moral as well as in civil life. There is not a pleasure, social or otherwise, which is not assessed by fate at its full value!”

— Alfred de Musset