French writer, poet & politician (1790-1869)
All nature is the temple; earth the altar.
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
"Prayer", Poetical Meditations
I am persuaded that if the brutes even--if the dog, the horse, the ox, the elephant, the bird, could speak, they would confess, that, at the bottom of their nature, their instincts, their sensations, their obtuse intelligence, assisted by organs less perfect than ours, there is a clouded, secret sentiment of this existence of a superior and primordial Being, from whom all emanates, and to whom all returns.
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
Atheism Among the People
O time, arrest your flight! and you, propitious hours, arrest your course! Let us savor the fleeting delights of our most beautiful days!
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
"The Lake"
Death, with funereal shades in vain surrounds me,
My reason through his darkness seeth light:
'Tis the last step which brings me close to Thee:
'Tis the veil falling, 'twixt Thy face and mine.
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
"Prayer", Poetical Meditations
God, to conceive him, intellect design'd;
At last, her Maker see, 'neath nature's vest!
A voice in silence whispers to the mind--
Who hath not heard that voice within his breast?
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
"The Valley", Poetical Meditations
Love alone was left, as a great image of a dream that was erased.
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
"The Valley", Poetical Meditations
Before this century shall run out, journalism will be the whole press. Mankind will write their book day by day, hour by hour, page by page. Thought will spread abroad with the rapidity of light--instantly conceived, instantly written, instantly understood at the extremities of the earth.
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
attributed, Forty Thousand Quotations, Prose and Poetical
The People will not allow themselves to be changed into hogs by the Circes of Atheism. Their souls will flash indignation against their transformers. A day will come when they will see that they are impoverished under the pretext of being enriched; that, when they are robbed of their souls and of God, both their titles to liberty are stolen from them.
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
Atheism Among the People
Yea, measur'd are thine hours no more by time,
Ye radiant envoys, from the heavenly clime!
To what new palace will ye hurry me?
Now, now I swim in light-diffusing streams,
Space grows before me, and the earth, meseems, beneath my feet doth flee.
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
"The Dying Christian", Poetical Meditations
But Nature too, shakes off her sleep today;
By May's mild sun we see reviv'd her frame,
Around my window Venus' birds proclaim,
The month most cherish'd backwards bends his way!
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
"Hymn to the Sun", Poetical Meditations
Soul of the universe, Sire, God, Creator,
Lord, I believe in Thee, 'neath all these names:
And without having need to hear thy word,
In the sky's brow my glorious creed I trace.
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
"Prayer", Poetical Meditations
Under the homeliest of features, there was something angelic.
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
Graziella: A Story of Italian Love
Hence life, as through a cloud, for me I see
Vanish, and to the past's dark shade 'tis chas'd;
As a grand image love remains to me--
Sole remnant of a dream, by morn effac'd.
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
"The Valley", Poetical Meditations
My reason is the universe's voice.
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
"Prayer", Poetical Meditations
Experience is the only prophesy of wise men.
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
speech at Mâcon, 1847
We are earth's children, and life is the same in sap as in blood; all that the earth, our mother, feels and expresses to the eye by her form and aspect, in melancholy or in splendor, finds an echo within us.
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
Raphael: Or, Pages of the Book of Life at Twenty
Newspapers will ultimately engross all literature.
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
attributed, Forty Thousand Quotations, Prose and Poetical