Alfred de vigny

No writer, no matter how gifted, immortalizes himself unless he has crystallized into expressive and original phrase the eternal sentiments and yearnings of the human heart.

The acts of the human race on the world's stage have doubtless a coherent unity, but the meaning of the vast tragedy enacted will be visible only to the eye of God, until the end, which will reveal it...

What is the use of theorizing as to wherein lies the charm that moves us?

Of late years (perhaps as a result of our political changes) art has borrowed from history more than ever.

One might almost reckon mathematically that, having undergone the double composition of public opinion and of the author, their history reaches us at third hand and is thus separated by two stages...

The study of social progress is today not less needed in literature than is the analysis of the human heart.

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

What it values most of all is the sum total of events and the advance of civilization, which carries individuals along with it; but, indifferent to details, it cares less to have them real than noble...

On the day when man told the story of his life to man, history was born.

France, for example, loves at the same time history and the drama, because the one explores the vast destinies of humanity, and the other the individual lot of man.