Alfred de Vigny Men Quotations

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 perhaps to the last man.

From this, without doubt, sprang the fable. Man created it thus, because it was not given him to see more than himself and nature, which surrounds him; but he created it true with a truth all its own.

I think, then, that man, after having satisfied his first longing for facts, wanted something fuller - some grouping, some adaptation to his capacity and experience, of the links of this vast chain of events which his sight could not take in.

What is a great life if not a youthful idea executed by a man of mature years.

We live in an age of universal investigation, and of exploration of the sources of all movements.

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

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.

Let us dream that once upon a time have lived men stronger and greater, who were more determined for good or for evil; that does us good.

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

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