Stendhal Quotes & Sayings

Great ladies are no more spiteful than the average rich woman; but one acquires in their society a greater susceptibility, and feels more profoundly andmore irremediably, their unpleasant remarks. — Stendhal

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

I love her beauty, but I fear her mind. — Stendhal

Punish me for my atrocious pride," she said to him, squeezing him in her arms as though to strangle him; "you are my master, I am your slave, I must beg pardon upon my knees for having sought to rebel." She slipped from his embrace to fall at his feet. "Yes, you are my master," she said again, intoxicated with love and joy; "reign over me for ever, punish your slave severely when she seeks to rebel. — Stendhal

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

Signs cannot be represented, in a spy's report, so damningly as words. — Stendhal

It is the nobility of their style which will make our writers of 1840 unreadable forty years from now. — Stendhal

It is something like love at first sight. An instant reveals to you what your heart had needed for a long time without recognizing it. — Stendhal

Each man for himself in that desert of egoism which is called life. — Stendhal

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

Conversationis like the table of contents of a dull book ... All the greatest subjects of human thought are proudly displayedin it. Listen to it for three minutes, and you ask yourself which is more striking, the emphasis of the speaker or his shocking ignorance. — Stendhal

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

Has he written to you?'
'He writes frequently.'
'Shew me his letters this instant, I order you'; and M. de Renal added six feet to his stature. — Stendhal

Women prefer emotions to reasoning. — Stendhal

They can only touch the heart by bruising it. — Stendhal

If I meet the Christian Deity, I am lost: He is a tyrant and as such, is full of ideas of vengeance; His Bible speaks of nothing but fearful punishments. I never loved Him! I could never even believe that anyone did love Him sincerely. He is devoid of pity ... He will punish me in some abominable manner. — Stendhal

To describe happiness is to diminish it. — Stendhal

sound reasoning always gives offence. Julien's — Stendhal

Perhaps men who cannot love passionately are those who feel the effect of beauty most keenly; at any rate this is the strongest impression women can make on them. — Stendhal

I think no woman I have had ever gave me so sweet a moment, or at so light a price, as the moment I owe to a newly heard musical phrase. — Stendhal

I cannot provide the reality of events, I can only convey their shadow. — Stendhal

In matters of sentiment, the public has very crude ideas; and the most shocking fault of women is that they make the public the supreme judge of their lives. — Stendhal

People happy in love have an air of intensity. — Stendhal

There is no such thing as "natural law": this expression is nothing but old nonsense ... Prior to laws, what is natural is only the strength of the lion, or the need of the creature suffering from hunger or cold; in short, need. — Stendhal

One-half, the finest half, of life is hidden from the man who does not love with passion. — Stendhal

Spring appears and we are once more children. — Stendhal

Life is too short, and the time we waste in yawning never can be regained. — Stendhal

Faith, I am no such fool; everyone for himself in this desert of selfishness which is called life. — Stendhal

They were completely vague. They expressed everything and nothing. 'It is the Aeolian harp of style,' thought Julien. 'Amid the most lofty thoughts about annihilation, death, the infinite, etc., I can see no reality save a shocking fear of ridicule. — Stendhal

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

To seem sorrowful is not in good taste: You're supposed to seem bored. — Stendhal

I will never demean myself to speak about my courage," said Julien, coldly, "it would be mean to do so. Let the world judge by the facts. — Stendhal

Jean Jacques Rousseauis nothing but a fool in my eyes when he takes it upon himself to criticise society; he did not understand it, and approached it with the heart of an upstart flunkey ... For all his preaching a Republic and the overthrow of monarchical titles, the upstart is mad with joy if a Duke alters the course of his after-dinner stroll to accompany one of his friends. — Stendhal

True love makes the thought of death frequent, easy, without terrors; it merely becomes the standard of comparison, the price one would pay for many things. — Stendhal

Life is very short, and it ought not to be spent crawling at the feet of miserable scoundrels. — Stendhal

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

Because one has little fear of shocking vanity in Italy, people adopt an intimate tone very quickly and discuss personal things. — Stendhal

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

Nothing is so hideous as an obsolete fashion. — Stendhal

I do not feel I have wisdom enough yet to love what is ugly. — Stendhal

Here are my politics: I love music and painting; a good book is an event for me; I'm going on forty-four. How much time do I have left? Fifteen, twenty, thirty years at most? Very well! I maintain that in thirty years ministers will be a bit shrewder, but just about as honest as they are today. — Stendhal

The tyranny of public opinion (and what an opinion!) is as fatuous in the small towns of France as it is in the United States of America. — Stendhal

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road. — Stendhal

It is better to have a prosaic husband and to take a romantic lover. — Stendhal

The great majority of men, especially in France, both desire and possess a fashionable woman, much in the way one might own a fine horse - as a luxury befitting a young man. — Stendhal

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

The boredom of married life inevitable destroys love, when love has preceded marriage. — Stendhal

Love of the head has doubtless more intelligence than true love, but it only has moments of enthusiasm. It knows itself too well, it sits in judgement on itself incessantly; far from distracting thought, it is made by sheer force of thought. — Stendhal

But passion most dissembles, yet betrays, Even by its darkness; as the blackest sky Foretells the heaviest tempest. Don Juan, I. 73 — Stendhal

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

The footman burst in, announcing, 'Monsieur le Duc de
.'
'Hold your tongue, you fool,' said the Duke as he entered the room. He said this so well, and with such majesty than Julien could not help thinking that knowing how to lose his temper with a footman was the whole extent of this great personage's knowledge. — Stendhal

Mathematics allows for no hypocrisy and no vagueness. — Stendhal

For the future, I shall rely only upon those elements of my character which I have tested. Who would ever have said that I should find pleasure in shedding tears? That I should love the man who proves to me that I am nothing more than a fool? — Stendhal

An English traveller relates how he lived upon intimate terms with a tiger; he had reared it and used to play with it, but always kept a loaded pistol on the table. — Stendhal

I have a bad memory for facts. — Stendhal

Love is a beautiful flower, but we must be brave enough to pick her up from the edge of a precipice. — Stendhal

These gentlemen, although of the highest nobility,' thought Julien, 'are not in the least boring like the people who come to dine with M. de La Mole; and I can see why,' he added a moment later,'they are not ashamed to be indecent. — Stendhal

I see but one rule: to be clear. — Stendhal

Alas! our frailty is the cause, not we! For such as we are made of, such we be. Twelfth Night It — Stendhal

Women are always eagerly on the lookout for any emotion. — Stendhal

Prestige! Sir, is it nothing? To be revered by fools, gaped at by children, envied by the rich and scorned by the wise. — Stendhal

The English are, I think the most obtuse and barbarous people in the world — Stendhal

Every great action is extreme when it is undertaken. Only after it has been accomplished does it seem possible to those creatures of more common stuff. — Stendhal

Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it. — Stendhal

If you think of paying court to the men in power, your eternal ruin is assured. — Stendhal

The ordinary procedure of the nineteenth century is that when a powerful and noble personage encounters a man of feeling, he kills, exiles, imprisons or so humiliates him that the other, like a fool, dies of grief. — Stendhal

A novel is a mirror walking along a main road. — Stendhal

I call 'crystallization' that action of the mind that discovers fresh perfections in its beloved at every turn of events. — Stendhal

His whole life had been merely a long preparation for misfortune, — Stendhal

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

Mathilde returned and strolled past the drawing-room windows; she saw him busily engaged in describing to Madame de Fervaques the old ruined castles that crown the steep banks of the Rhine and give them so distinctive a character. He was beginning to acquit himself none too badly in the use of the sentimental and picturesque language which is called wit in certain drawing-rooms. — Stendhal

When a man leaves his mistress, he runs the risk of being betrayed two or three times daily. — Stendhal

Friendship has its illusions no less than love. — Stendhal

Who knows whether it is not true that phosphorus and mind are not the same thing? — Stendhal

A very small matter, when all is said; only a fool would be concerned about it. — Stendhal

Could anything possibly be more humorous than believing in the depth or in the depravity of the Parisian character? — Stendhal

Want of exercise was beginning to affect his health and to give him the weak and excitable character of a young German student. — Stendhal

It is from cowardice and not from want of enlightenment that we do not read in our own hearts. — Stendhal

A good book is an event in my life. — Stendhal

I think being condemned to death is the only real distinction," said Mathilde. "It is the only thing which cannot be bought. — Stendhal

It is with blows dealt by public contempt that a husband kills his wife in the nineteenth century; it is by shutting the doors ofall the drawing-rooms in her face. — Stendhal

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

Misery destroys judgment. — Stendhal

It is difficult to escape from the prevailing disease of one's generation. — Stendhal

On the other hand in America, in the Republic, one has to spend the whole weary day paying serious court to the shopkeepers in the street, and must become as stupid as they are; and there, one has no Opera. — Stendhal

Oh, if there were only a true religion. Fool that I am, I see a Gothic cathedral and venerable stained-glass windows, and my weak heart conjures up the priest to fit the scene. My soul would understand him, my soul has need of him. I only find a nincompoop with dirty hair. — Stendhal

One can acquire everything in solitude except character. — Stendhal

The pleasures and the cares of the luckiest ambition, even of limitless power, are nothing next to the intimate happiness that tenderness and love give. I am man before being a prince, and when I have the good fortune to be in love, my mistress addresses a man and not a prince. — Stendhal

Love has always been the most important business in my life, I should say the only one. — Stendhal

The suspicion that a rival is loved is painful enough already, but to have the love that he inspires in her confessed to one in detail by the woman whom one adores is without doubt the acme of suffering. — Stendhal

Every true passion thinks only of itself. — Stendhal

A novel is a mirror travelling down the road. — Stendhal

A woman of generous character will sacrifice her life a thousand times over for her lover, but will break with him for ever over a question of pride. — Stendhal

Beauty is the promise of happiness. — Stendhal

In love, unlike most other passions, the recollection of what you have had and lost is always better than what you can hope for in the future. — Stendhal

People who have been made to suffer by certain things cannot be reminded of them without a horror which paralyses every other pleasure, even that to be found in reading a story. — Stendhal

Any man who talks about his love affairs thereby proves he is ignorant of love and is moved only by vanity. — Stendhal

To be loved at first sight, a man should have at the same time something to respect and something to pity in his face. — Stendhal

It seemed to Julian that there was far too much hair in his wig. — Stendhal

On a cold winter morning a cigar fortifies the soul. — Stendhal