The first qualification for a historian is to have no ability to invent.
STENDHALNapoleon was indeed the man sent by God to help the youth of France! Who is to take his place?
More Stendhal Quotes
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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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Only great minds can afford a simple style.
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A very small matter, when all is said; only a fool would be concerned about it.
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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.
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Your career will be a painful one. I divine something in you which offends the vulgar.
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Almost all our misfortunes in life come from the wrong notions we have about the things that happen to us.
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Beauty is nothing but a promise of happiness.
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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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Who knows whether it is not true that phosphorus and mind are not the same thing?
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When a man leaves his mistress, he runs the risk of being betrayed two or three times daily.
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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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Logic is neither an art nor a science but a dodge.
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On a cold winter morning a cigar fortifies the soul.
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The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
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The boredom of married life inevitable destroys love, when love has preceded marriage.
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A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.
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When intimacy followed love in Italy there were no longer any vain pretensions between two lovers.
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It is difficult to escape from the prevailing disease of one’s generation.
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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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Love is like fever; it comes and goes without the will having any part of the process.
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At a distance, we cannot conceive of the authority of a despot who knows all his subjects on sight.
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To find love in Paris you must go down among those classes where the absence of education and of vanity, and the struggle for bare necessities, have allowed more energy to survive.
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A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love.
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In our calling, we have to choose; we must make our fortune either in this world or in the next, there is no middle way.
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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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Because one has little fear of shocking vanity in Italy, people adopt an intimate tone very quickly and discuss personal things.
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