Stendhal Quotes

Never had he found himself so close to those terrible weapons of feminine artillery... view

By: Stendhal

Politics in a literary work, is like a gun shot in the middle of a concert, something vulgar, and however, something which is impossible to ignore... view

By: Stendhal

Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it... view

By: 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... view

By: Stendhal

People happy in love have an air of intensity... view

By: Stendhal

Our true passions are selfish... view

By: Stendhal

Only great minds can afford a simple style... view

By: Stendhal

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

By: Stendhal

Nothing is so hideous as an obsolete fashion... view

By: Stendhal

She had caprices of a marvellous unexpectedness, and how is any one to imitate a caprice?.. view

By: Stendhal

Mathematics allows for no hypocrisy and no vagueness... view

By: Stendhal

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

By: Stendhal

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

By: Stendhal

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

By: Stendhal

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

By: Stendhal

One can acquire everything in solitude except character... view

By: Stendhal

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

By: Stendhal

Women are always eagerly on the lookout for any emotion... view

By: Stendhal

What is really beautiful must always be true... view

By: Stendhal

True love makes the thought of death frequent, easy, without terrors.. view

By: Stendhal

To describe happiness is to diminish it... view

By: 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... view

By: Stendhal

This is the curse of our age, even the strangest aberrations are no cure for boredom... view

By: Stendhal

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

By: Stendhal

The Russians imitate French ways, but always at a distance of fifty years... view

By: Stendhal

Prudery is a kind of avarice, the worst of all... view

By: Stendhal

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

By: Stendhal

The more a race is governed by its passions, the less it has acquired the habit of cautious and reasoned argument, the more intense will be its love of music... view

By: 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... view

By: 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... view

By: Stendhal

The French are the wittiest, the most charming, and up to the present, at all events, the least musical race on Earth... view

By: Stendhal

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

By: 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... view

By: Stendhal

The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same... view

By: Stendhal

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road... view

By: Stendhal

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

By: 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... view

By: Stendhal

A forty-year-old woman is only something to men who have loved her in her youth... view

By: Stendhal

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

By: Stendhal

A wise woman never yields by appointment. It should always be an unforeseen happiness... view

By: Stendhal

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

By: Stendhal

Far less envy in America than in France, and far less wit... view

By: Stendhal