Stendhal Quotes

One can acquire everything in solitude except character.

Puns are incompatible with murder.

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

...he could no longer give a thought to anything else. His days passed like hours. At all hours of the day, when he sought to occupy his mind with some serious business, his thoughts would abandon everything, and he would come to himself a quarter of an hour later, his heart throbbing, his head confused, and dreaming of this one idea: 'Does she love me?

(Center Lake Como)... and the bold promontory that separates the two branches of the lake, that of Como, so voluptuous, and that which runs towards Lecco, full of severity; a sublime and graceful aspect, which the most renowned site in the world, the Bay of Naples, equals, but does not surpass...

A novel is like a bow, and the violin that produces the sound is the reader’s soul.

Since I am a man, my heart is three or four times less sensitive, because I have three or four times as much power of reason and experience of the world — a thing which you women call hard-heartedness. As a man, I can take refuge in having mistresses. The more of them I have, and the greater the scandal, the more I acquire reputation and brilliance in society.

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.

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

Da, domnule, un roman e ca o oglinda purtata de-a lungul unui drum batut de multa lume. El va rasfrange in ochi cand seninul cerului albastru, cand noroiul mocirlelor din cale. Iar pe cel ce poarta povara oglinzii in spate il veti invinovati ca e imoral! Oglinda lui arata noroiul, iar voi invinuiti oglinda! Mai bine ati invinui drumul pe care se afla mocirla si, mai mult inca, pe inspectorul drumurilor, care ingaduie sa zaca apa si sa se formeze mocirla.

Misery destroys judgment.

Recuerde usted siempre el gran principio de su siglo: «Sé lo contrario de lo que esperan que seas.»

O musculiță efemeră se naște la nouă dimineață, în lungile zile de vară, ca să moară la cinci seara; cum ar putea ea înțelege cuvântul noapte? Mai dă-i cinci ore de viață, și ea va vedea și va înțelege ce e noaptea.

Tel est le malheur de notre siècle, les plus étranges égarements même ne guérissent pas de l'ennui.

He [Napoleon] had the defect of all parvenus — that of having too great an opinion of the class into which he had risen.