This eBook was produced by David Widger





THE CHILD OF A CENTURY

By Alfred de Musset





A terrible danger lurks in the
knowledge of what is possible

Accustomed to call its disguise virtue

Adieu, my son, I love you and I die

All philosophy is akin to atheism

All that is not life, it is the noise
of life

And when love is sure of itself and
knows response

Because you weep, you fondly imagine
yourself innocent

Become corrupt, and you will cease to
suffer

Began to forget my own sorrow in my
sympathy for her

Beware of disgust, it is an incurable
evil

Can any one prevent a gossip

Cold silence, that negative force

Contrive to use proud disdain as a
shield

Death is more to be desired than a
living distaste for life

Despair of a man sick of life, or the
whim of a spoiled child

Do they think they have invented what
they see

Each one knows what the other is about
to say

Fool who destroys his own happiness

Force itself, that mistress of the
world

Funeral processions are no longer
permitted

Galileo struck the earth, crying:
"Nevertheless it moves!"

Good and bad days succeeded each other
almost regularly

Great sorrows neither accuse nor
blaspheme--they listen

Grief itself was for her but a means of
seducing

Happiness of being pursued

He who is loved by a beautiful woman is
sheltered from every blow

He lives only in the body

How much they desire to be loved who
say they love no more

Human weakness seeks association

I can not be near you and separated
from you at the same moment

I can not love her, I can not love
another

I boasted of being worse than I really
was

I neither love nor esteem sadness

I do not intend either to boast or
abase myself

Ignorance into which the Greek clergy
plunged the laity

In what do you believe?

Indignation can solace grief and
restore happiness

Is he a dwarf or a giant

Is it not enough to have lived?

It is a pity that you must seek
pastimes

Make a shroud of your virtue in which
to bury your crimes

Man who suffers wishes to make her whom
he loves suffer

Men doubted everything: the young men
denied everything

No longer esteemed her highly enough to
be jealous of her

Of all the sisters of love, the most
beautiful is pity

Perfection does not exist

Pure caprice that I myself mistook for
a flash of reason

Quarrel had been, so to speak, less sad
than our reconciliation

Reading the Memoirs of Constant

Resorted to exaggeration in order to
appear original

Sceptic regrets the faith he has lost
the power to regain

Seven  who are always the same: the
first is called hope

She pretended to hope for the best

Sometimes we seem to enjoy unhappiness

Speak to me of your love, she said,
"not of your grief

St. Augustine

Suffered, and yet took pleasure in it

Suspicions that are ever born anew

Terrible words; I deserve them, but
they will kill me

There are two different men in you

Ticking of which (our arteries) can be
heard only at night

"Unhappy man!"  she cried, "you will
never know how to love"

We have had a mass celebrated, and it
cost us a large sum

What you take for love is nothing more
than desire

What human word will ever express thy
slightest caress

When passion sways man, reason follows
him weeping and warning

Who has told you that tears can wash
away the stains of guilt

Wine suffuses the face as if to prevent
shame appearing there

You believe in what is said here below
and not in what is done

You play with happiness as a child
plays with a rattle

You turn the leaves of dead books

Your great weapon is silence

Youth is to judge of the world from
first impressions


If you wish to read the entire context of any of these quotations, select a short segment and copy it into your clipboard memory--then open the appropriate eBook and paste the phrase into your computer's find or search operation.