Stendhal Quotes

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

The politeness of the upper classes of France, and probably of England, prohibits all energy, and wears it out, if it by chance existed.

Comme tomber dans une inconvenance de parole est beaucoup plus funeste à un jeune homme qu'il ne lui est avantageux de dire un joli mot, la postérité, probablement moins niaise, ne se fera pas moins d'idée de l'insipidité de la bonne compagnie.

L'amore è come la febbre, nasce e si spegne senza che la volontà vi abbia la più piccola parte.

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

L'amour a toujours été pour moi la plus grande des affaires ou plutôt la seule.

(out of what miseries does love create its happiness!):

La politique au milieu des intérêts d'imagination, c'est un coup de pistolet au milieu d'un concert.

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

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

Un être à demi stupide, mais attentif, mais prudent tous les jours, goûte très-souvent le plaisir de triompher des hommes à imagination.

On est considéré, à Paris, à cause de sa voiture et non à cause de sa vertu.

"But all these details are but abominable egotism!"
"No doubt, and what is this book, but an abominable egotism!" [...] If this book be boring, in two years it shall wrap butter at the grocer's; if it bore not, one shall see that egotism, but a sincere one, is a way of painting the human heart on the knowledge of which we have made a giant's steps since 1721, time of the Persian Letters of this man I've studied so much—Montesquieu.

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

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.