The study of social progress ...

The study of social progress is to-day not less needed in literature than is the analysis of the human heart. We live in an age of universal investigation, and of exploration of the sources of all movements. France, for example, loves at the same time history and the drama, because the one explores the vast destinies of humanity, and the other the individual lot of man. These embrace the whole of life. But it is the province of religion, of philosophy, of pure poetry only, to go beyond life, beyond time, into eternity.
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 Alfred de Vigny

Quotes from the same author

The existence of the soldier, next to capital punishment, is the most grievous vestige of barbarism which survives among men.
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 Alfred de Vigny
Hope is the greatest madness. What can we expect of a world that we enter with the assurance of seeing our fathers and mothers die? A world where, if two beings love each other and give their lives to each other, both can be sure that one will watch the other perish?
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 Alfred de Vigny
We live in an age of universal investigation, and of exploration of the sources of all movements.
 See image
 Alfred de Vigny
France, for example, loves at the same time history and the drama, because the one explores the vast destinies of humanity, and the other the individual lot of man.
 See image
 Alfred de Vigny
Do you know that charming part of our country which has been called the garden of France - that spot where, amid verdant plains watered by wide streams, one inhales the purest air of heaven?
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 Alfred de Vigny