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.
STENDHALPeople 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.
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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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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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.
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Wounded pride can take a rich young man far who is surrounded by flatterers since birth.
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The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
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Any man who talks about his love affairs thereby proves he is ignorant of love and is moved only by vanity.
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The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.
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Never had he found himself so close to those terrible weapons of feminine artillery.
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What is really beautiful must always be true.
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I see but one rule: to be clear. If I am not clear, all my world crumbles to nothing.
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If you don’t love me, it does not matter, anyway I can love for both of us.
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Love has always been the most important business in my life; I should say the only one.
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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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Every great action is extreme when it is undertaken. Only after it has been accomplished does it seem possible to those creatures of more common stuff.
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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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