Alfred de Musset Love Quotations

[I]f you are truly a man, sure of yourself and confident of your strength, you may taste of life without fear and without reserve; you may be sad or joyous, deceived or respected; but be sure you are loved, for what matters the rest?

Take love as a sober man takes wine; do not become a drunkard. If your mistress is sincere and faithful, love her for that; but if she is not, if she is merely young and beautiful, love her for that; if she is agreeable and spirituelle, love her for that; if she is none of these things but merely loves you, love her for that. Love does not come to us every day.

One must not trifle with love

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.

The return makes one love the farewell.

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

I see that you believe in love such as the poets and romancers have represented... The poets represent love as the sculptors design beauty, as the musicians create melody; that is to say, endowed with an exquisite nervous organization, they gather up with discerning ardor the purest elements of life, the most beautiful lines of matter, and the most harmonious voices of nature.... To try to find in real life such love as this, eternal and absolute, is the same thing as to seek on the public squares such a woman as Venus or to expect nightingales to sing the symphonies of Beethoven.

The heart that once has been your shrine for other loves is too divine

The only truth is love beyond reason.

life is a deep sleep of which love is the dream

Doubt, if you will, the being who loves you, Woman or dog, but never doubt love itself.

The only true language in the world is a kiss.

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

... but one loves, and when one is on the brink of death, one turns around to look backward, and one says to oneself: "I have often suffered, I have sometimes been wrong, but I have loved.