Alfred de Vigny

But it is the province of religion, of philosophy, of pure poetry only, to go beyond life, beyond time, into eternity.

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

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 from the original fact.

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

We shall find in our troubled hearts, where discord reigns, two needs which seem at variance, but which merge, as I think, in a common source - the love of the true, and the love of the fabulous.

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

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

Of what use is the memory of facts, if not to serve as an example of good or of evil?

Just as we descend into our consciences to judge of actions which our minds can not weigh, can we not also search in ourselves for the feeling which gives birth to forms of thought, always vague and cloudy?

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 or, rather, grand and complete.

The human mind, I believe, cares for the True only in the general character of an epoch.

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.