Stendhal Quotes

After moral poisoning, one requires physical remedies and a bottle of champagne.

The ordinary procedure of the nineteenth century is that when a powerful and noble personage encount...

A novel is a mirror walking along a main road.

Chélan had acted as imprudently for Julien as he had for himself. He had given him the habit of reas...

I think being condemned to death is the only real distinction," said Mathilde. "It is the only thing...

Indeed, man has two different beings inside him. What devil thought of that malicious touch?

For the future, I shall rely only upon those elements of my character which I have tested. Who would...

In Paris, Julien’s position with regard to Madame de Renal would very soon have been simplified; but...

A good book is an event in my life.

One can acquire everything in solitude but character.

Love born in the brain is more spirited, doubtless, than true love, but it has only flashes of enthu...

They were completely vague. They expressed everything and nothing. 'It is the Æolian harp of style,'...

Ah, Sir, a novel is a mirror carried along a high road. At one moment it reflects to your vision the...

Has he written to you?''He writes frequently.''Shew me his letters this instant, I order you'; and M...

An English traveller relates how he lived upon intimate terms with a tiger; he had reared it and use...

A melancholy air can never be the right thing; what you want is a bored air. If you are melancholy, ...

Mathilde made an effort to use the more intimate form; she was evidently more attentive to this unus...

I am mad, I am going under, I must follow the advice of a friend, and pay no heed to myself.

Julien felt himself to be strong and resolute like a man who sees clearly into his own heart.

True love makes the thought of death frequent, easy, without terrors; it merely becomes the standard...

People happy in love have an air of intensity.

Friendship has its illusions no less than love.

The more one pleases everybody, the less one pleases profoundly.

If you don't love me, it does not matter, anyway I can love for both of us

The first qualification for a historian is to have no ability to invent.

The man of genius is he and he alone who finds such joy in his art that he will work at it come hell...

Logic is neither an art nor a science but a dodge.

The more a race is governed by its passions, the less it has acquired the habit of cautious and reas...

To write a book is to risk being shot at in public.

Nothing is so hideous as an obsolete fashion.

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.

If you don't love me, it does not matter, anyway I can love for both of us.

To be loved at first sight, a man should have at the same time something to respect and something to...

The first virtue of a young man today - that is, for the next fifty years perhaps, as long as we liv...

The only unhappiness is a life of boredom.

If you want to be witty work on your character and say what you think on every occasion.

Only great minds can afford a simple style.

Without patience, without absence of anger, no one can be called a politician.

A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love.

To describe happiness is to diminish it.

Almost all our misfortunes in life come from the wrong notions we have about the things that happen ...

The pleasures of love are always in proportion to our fears.

A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love

In love, unlike most other passions, the recollection of what you have had and lost is always better...

God's only excuse is that he does not exist

Power, after love, is the first source of happiness.

All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.

One can acquire everything in solitude except character.

There are as many styles of beauty as there are visions of happiness.