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A novel is a mirror which passes over a highway. Sometimes it reflects to your eyes the blue of the skies, at others the churned-up mud of the road.

Stendhal

Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it.
STENDHAL

Description Happiness Spoil
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.
STENDHAL

Alone Art Genius Himself Man Water
A novel is like a bow, and the violin that produces the sound is the reader’s soul.
STENDHAL

Novel Production Reading Soul Sound Violin
If you want to be witty, work on your character and say what you think on every occasion.
STENDHAL

Character Occasion Thinking Work Yourself
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.
STENDHAL

Ignorance Impossible Literature Politics Vulgar Work
Love is like fever; it comes and goes without the will having any part of the process.
STENDHAL

Fever Love Process Willing
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.
STENDHAL

Comparison Death Love Pay Standard Thinking True
Beauty is nothing but a promise of happiness.
STENDHAL

Beautiful Happiness Promise
Spring appears and we are once more children.
STENDHAL

Appearance Children Ourselves Spring
On a cold winter morning a cigar fortifies the soul.
STENDHAL

Hard Soul Winter
In matters of sentiment, the public has very crude ideas; and the most shocking fault of women is that they make the public the supreme judge of their lives.
STENDHAL

Emotion Ideas Judgement Life Mistake Public Shock
I love her beauty, but I fear her mind.
STENDHAL

Beautiful Fear Herself Love Mindset
It is the nobility of their style which will make our writers of 1840 unreadable forty years from now.
STENDHAL

Noble Past Reading Style Time Writing
Politics in the middle of things of the imagination is like a pistol shot in the middle of a concert.
STENDHAL

Concert Imagination Politics
To describe happiness is to diminish it.
STENDHAL

Description Diminish Happiness
Man is not free to refuse to do the thing which gives him more pleasure than any other conceivable action.
STENDHAL

Action Freedom Man Pleasure Refusal
I do not feel I have wisdom enough yet to love what is ugly.
STENDHAL

Enough Feeling Love Myself Ugly Wisdom
Faith, I am no such fool; everyone for himself in this desert of selfishness which is called life.
STENDHAL

Desert Faith Fool Happiness Life
Prudery is a kind of avarice, the worst of all.
STENDHAL

Kind Vice Worst
After moral poisoning, one requires physical remedies and a bottle of champagne.
STENDHAL

Alcohol Bottle Champagne Moral Physical Poison
All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.
STENDHAL

Clever Fear Foundation Religion Smart
Far less envy in America than in France.
STENDHAL

Feeling Jealous Place
It is with blows dealt by public contempt that a husband kills his wife in the nineteenth century; it is by shutting the doors ofall the drawing-rooms in her face.
STENDHAL

Draw Face Husband Kill Public Room Wife
Any man who talks about his love affairs thereby proves he is ignorant of love and is moved only by vanity.
STENDHAL

Ignorance Love Man Move Talk Vanity
Love is a well from which we can drink only as much as we have put in, and the stars that shine from it are only our eyes looking in.
STENDHAL

Drink Eyes Love Ourselves Shine Stardom
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.
STENDHAL

Attention Attraction Engine Myself Rule Steam Support Weird World
I have a bad memory for facts.
STENDHAL

Bad Fact Memories Myself

A novel is a mirror which passes over a highway. Sometimes it reflects to your eyes the blue of the skies, at others the churned-up mud of the road.

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A novel is a mirror which passes over a highway. Sometimes it reflects to your eyes the blue of the skies, at others the churned-up mud of the road.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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