Stendhal Quotes

91 Sourced Quotes

It is not enough for a landscape to be interesting in itself. Eventually there must be a moral and historic interest.

Stendhal
People are less self-conscious in the intimacy of family life and during the anxiety of a great sorrow. The dazzling varnish of anextreme politeness is then less in evidence, and the true qualities of the heart regain their proper proportions.

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

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

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Chélan had acted as imprudently for Julien as he had for himself. He had given him the habit of reasoning correctly, and of not being put off by empty words, but he had neglected to tell him that this habit was a crime in the person of no importance, since every piece of logical reasoning is offensive.

Stendhal
To find love in Paris you must go down among those classes where the absence of education and of vanity, and the struggle for bare necessities, have allowed more energy to survive.

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

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

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

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

Stendhal
War was then no longer this noble and unified outburst of souls in love with glory that he had imagined from Napoleon's proclamations.

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A strange effect of marriage, such as the nineteenth century has made it! The boredom of married life inevitably destroys love, when love has preceded marriage. And yet, as a philosopher has observed, it speedily brings about, among people who are rich enough not to have to work, an intense boredom with all quiet forms of enjoyment. And it is only dried up hearts, among women, that it does not predispose to love.

Stendhal
The nervous fluid in man is consumed by the brain; in woman, by the heart: it is there that they are the most sensitive.

Stendhal
This mania of the mothers of the period, to be constantly in pursuit of a son-in-law.

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It would be impossible for a woman to be more wretched …I hope I am going to die…I feel my heart freezing.

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

Stendhal
I see but one rule: to be clear. If I am not clear, all my world crumbles to nothing.

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Now that the steam engine rules the world, a title is an absurdity, still I am all dressed up in this title. It will crush me if I do not support it. The title attracts attention to myself.

Stendhal
Napoleon was indeed the man sent by God to help the youth of France! Who is to take his place?

Stendhal
Love born in the brain is more spirited, doubtless, than true love, but it has only flashes of enthusiasm; it knows itself too well, it criticizes itself incessantly; so far from banishing thought, it is itself reared only upon a structure of thought.

Stendhal
The count had reached his fifties: a cruel word whose resonance can perhaps be fully appreciated only by a man desperately in love.

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The taste for freedom, the fashion and cult of happiness of the majority that the nineteenth century is infatuated with, was only a heresy in his eyes that would pass like others.

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

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

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The dinner was indifferent and the conversation irritating. "It's like the table of contents of a dull book," thought Julien. "All the greatest subjects of human thought are proudly displayed in it. Listen to it for three minutes, and you ask yourself which is more striking, the emphasis of the speaker or his shocking ignorance."

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

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It is terrifying to think how much research is needed to determine the truth of even the most unimportant fact.

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A novel is a mirror that strolls along a highway. Now it reflects the blue of the skies, now the mud puddles underfoot.

Stendhal