Love has always been the most important business in my life; I should say the only one.
STENDHALBecause one has little fear of shocking vanity in Italy, people adopt an intimate tone very quickly and discuss personal things.
More Stendhal Quotes
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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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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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It is from cowardice and not from want of enlightenment that we do not read in our own hearts.
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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.
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Politics in the middle of things of the imagination is like a pistol shot in the middle of a concert.
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Who knows whether it is not true that phosphorus and mind are not the same thing?
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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.
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I do not feel I have wisdom enough yet to love what is ugly.
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I am mad, I am going under, I must follow the advice of a friend, and pay no heed to myself.
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Power, after love, is the first source of happiness.
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It is not enough for a landscape to be interesting in itself. Eventually there must be a moral and historic interest.
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Why not make an end of it all? My life is a succession of griefs and bitter feelings. What is death? A very small matter, when all is said; only a fool would be concerned about it.
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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.
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But, if I sample this pleasure so prudently and circumspectly, it will no longer be a pleasure.
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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 Ido not support it. The title attracts attention to myself.
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Only great minds can afford a simple style.
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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.
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The French are the wittiest, the most charming, and up to the present, at all events, the least musical race on Earth.
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The first virtue of a young man today – that is, for the next fifty years perhaps, as long as we live in fear, and religion has regained its powers – is to be incapable of enthusiasm and not to have much in the way of brains.
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I see but one rule: to be clear.
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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.
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A novel is like a bow, and the violin that produces the sound is the reader’s soul.
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The boredom of married life inevitable destroys love, when love has preceded marriage.
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Man is not free to refuse to do the thing which gives him more pleasure than any other conceivable action.
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A very small matter, when all is said; only a fool would be concerned about it.
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This is the curse of our age, even the strangest aberrations are no cure for boredom.
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