A man who is half an idiot, but who keeps a sharp lookout and acts prudently all his life, often enjoys the pleasure of triumphing over men of more imagination than he.
STENDHALAn 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.
More Stendhal Quotes
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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.
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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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If you don’t love me, it does not matter, anyway I can love for both of us.
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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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The sight of anything extremely beautiful, in nature or in art, brings back the memory of what one loves, with the speed of lightning.
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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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One-half, the finest half, of life is hidden from the man who does not love with passion.
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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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To seem sorrowful is not in good taste: You’re supposed to seem bored.
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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.
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I do not feel I have wisdom enough yet to love what is ugly.
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Nothing is so hideous as an obsolete fashion.
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This religion takes away the courage of thinking of unusual things and prohibits self-examination above all as the most egregious of sins. It is one step away from protestantism.
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Napoleon was indeed the man sent by God to help the youth of France! Who is to take his place?
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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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