black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

God’s only excuse is that he does not exist.

Stendhal

An English traveller relates how he lived upon intimate terms with a tiger; he had reared it and used to play with it, but always kept a loaded pistol on the table.
STENDHAL

Himself Intimate Live Load Play Relate Travel Weapon
A wise woman never yields by appointment. It should always be an unforeseen happiness.
STENDHAL

Appointment Happiness Wisdom Woman
Prudery is a kind of avarice, the worst of all.
STENDHAL

Kind Vice Worst
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

Eyes Highway Mirror Novel Reflection Road
To be loved at first sight, a man should have at the same time something to respect and something to pity in his face.
STENDHAL

Face Himself Love Pity Respect Sight
People are less self-conscious in the intimacy of family life and during the anxiety of a great sorrow. The dazzling varnish of an extreme politeness is then less in evidence, and the true qualities of the heart regain their proper proportions.
STENDHAL

Anxiety Conscious Evidence Family Heart Intimacy Life People Polite Quality
The more one pleases everybody, the less one pleases profoundly.
STENDHAL

Obedience Oneself Please
At a distance, we cannot conceive of the authority of a despot who knows all his subjects on sight.
STENDHAL

Authority Distance Sight Subject
A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.
STENDHAL

Carry Main Mirror Novel Road
I used to think of deathlike I suppose soldiers think of it: it was a possible thing that I could well avoid by my skill.
STENDHAL

Avoid Death Possible Skill Soldier Thinking
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
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.
STENDHAL

Feeling Impression Love Man Passion Woman
To seem sorrowful is not in good taste: You’re supposed to seem bored.
STENDHAL

Bored Goodness Sorrow Taste
Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it.
STENDHAL

Description Happiness Spoil
Politics in the middle of things of the imagination is like a pistol shot in the middle of a concert.
STENDHAL

Concert Imagination Politics
The tyranny of public opinion (and what an opinion!) is as fatuous in the small towns of France as it is in the United States of America.
STENDHAL

Opinion Public Small Unity

God’s only excuse is that he does not exist.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

God’s only excuse is that he does not exist.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Stendhal Quotes