People who have been made to suffer by certain things cannot be reminded of them without a horror which paralyses every other pleasure, even that to be found in reading a story.
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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Napoleon was indeed the man sent by God to help the youth of France! Who is to take his place?
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Beauty is nothing but a promise of happiness.
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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.
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Now that the steam engine rules the world, a title is an absurdity, still I am all dressed up in this title. It will crush me if Ido not support it. The title attracts attention to myself.
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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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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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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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Women prefer emotions to reasoning.
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To seem sorrowful is not in good taste: You’re supposed to seem bored.
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Far less envy in America than in France.
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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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If you think of paying court to the men in power, your eternal ruin is assured.
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A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love.
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Prudery is a kind of avarice, the worst of all.
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A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.
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