ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE

Ier ENTRETIEN. «Toutes les choses sont en germe dans les paroles.»(Poète et philosophe indien.) Avant de vous donner la définition de la littérature, je voudrais vous en donner le sentiment. À moins d'être une pure intelligence, on ne comprend bien que ce qu'on a senti. Cicéron, le plus littéraire de tous les hommes qui ont jamais existé sur la ...

I now undertake to write the history of a small party of men who, cast by Providence into the very centre of the greatest drama of modern times, comprise in themselves the ideas, the passions, the faults, the virtues of their epoch, and whose life and political acts forming, as we may say, the nucleus of the French Revolution, perished by the sa...

Una circunstancia especial que es inútil dar a conocer al público, ha hecho entregar este libro a la imprenta. De intento y por su naturaleza, había de ser siempre un manuscrito; todo lo más, debía figurar en uno de estos archivos íntimos de familia, colección de documentos que eslabonan la generación presente con las que han dejado de existir; ...

It is all very well for Lamartine to explain, in his original prologue, that the touching, fascinating and pathetic story of Raphael was the experience of another man. It is well known that these feeling pages are but transcripts of an episode of his own heart-history. That the tale is one of almost feminine sentimentality is due, in some measur...

It is in this sense, my friends, that I say to you, ""I believe in God."" But, once having said this word with the universe of beings and of worlds, and blessed this invisible God for having rendered himself visible, sensible, evident, palpable, adorable in the mirror of weak human intelligence, made gradually more and more pure, I reason with m...