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.
STENDHALThere is no such thing as “natural law”: this expression is nothing but old nonsense… Prior to laws, what is natural is only the strength of the lion, or the need of the creature suffering from hunger or cold, in short, need.
More Stendhal Quotes
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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.
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A novel is like a bow, and the violin that produces the sound is the reader’s soul.
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I think being condemned to death is the only real distinction,” said Mathilde. “It is the only thing which cannot be bought.
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Far less envy in America than in France.
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There are as many styles of beauty as there are visions of happiness.
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To describe happiness is to diminish it.
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A forty-year-old woman is only something to men who have loved her in her youth.
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I call “crystallization” that action of the mind that discovers fresh perfections in its beloved at every turn of events.
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Women are always eagerly on the lookout for any emotion.
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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.
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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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The French are the wittiest, the most charming, and up to the present, at all events, the least musical race on Earth.
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Logic is neither an art nor a science but a dodge.
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I love her beauty, but I fear her mind.
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The first qualification for a historian is to have no ability to invent.
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