Stendhal Quotes

In love, unlike most other passions, the recollection of what you have had and lost is always better than what you can hope for in the future. ~ Stendhal

Far less envy in America than in France, and far less wit. ~ Stendhal

It is the nobility of their style which will make our writers of 1840 unreadable forty years from now. ~ Stendhal

Krister Stendhal, a Lutheran minister and Harvard University Dean gave these rules of Religious understanding for reporters to use when they are reporting on a religion.

Stendahl's Three Rules of Religious Understanding

(1) When you are trying to understand another religion, you should ask the adherents of that religion and not its enemies.

(2) Don't compare your best to their worst.

(3) Leave room for "holy envy." (By this Stendahl meant that you should be willing to recognize elements in the other religious tradition or faith that you admire and wish could, in some way, be reflected in your own religious tradition or faith.) ~ Kristner Stendhal

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. ~ Stendhal

An insane self-consciousness made him commit thousands of blunders. ~ Stendhal

For the future, I shall rely only upon those elements of my character which I have tested. Who would ever have said that I should find pleasure in shedding tears? That I should love the man who proves to me that I am nothing more than a fool? ~ Stendhal

The only way of touching a heart is to wound it ~ Stendhal

The Russians imitate French ways, but always at a distance of fifty years. ~ Stendhal

On the other hand in America, in the Republic, one has to spend the whole weary day paying serious court to the shopkeepers in the street, and must become as stupid as they are; and there, one has no Opera. ~ Stendhal

A strange effect of marriage, such as the nineteenth century has made it! The boredom of married life inevitably destroys love, when love has preceded marriage. And yet, as a philosopher has observed, it speedily brings about, among people who are rich enough not to have to work, an intense boredom with all quiet forms of enjoyment. And it is only dried up hearts, among women, that it does not predispose to love. ~ Stendhal

In Paris, Julien's position with regard to Madame de Renal would very soon have been simplified; but in Paris love is the child of the novels. The young tutor and his timid mistress would have found in three or four novels, and even in the lyrics of the Gymnase, a clear statement of their situation. The novels would have outlined for them the part to be played, shown them the model to copy; and this model, sooner or later, albeit without the slightest pleasure, and perhaps with reluctance, vanity would have compelled Julien to follow.

In a small town of the Aveyron or the Pyrenees, the slightest incident would have been made decisive by the ardour of the climate. Beneath our more sombre skies, a penniless young man, who is ambitious only because the refinement of his nature puts him in need of some of those pleasures which money provides, is in daily contact with a woman of thirty who is sincerely virtuous, occupied with her children, and never looks to novels for examples of conduct. Everything goes slowly, everything happens by degrees in the provinces: life is more natural. ~ Stendhal

The idea which tyrants find most useful is the idea of God. ~ Stendhal

The only real grounds for attack which the expression of Armance's countenance could offer to her enemies was a singular look which she had at times when her mind was most detached. This fixed and profound gaze was one of extreme attention; there was nothing in it, certainly, that could shock the most severe delicacy; it suggested neither coquetry nor assurance; but no one could deny that it was singular, and, in that respect, out of place in a young person. Madame de Bonnivet's flatterers, when they were sure of being noticed, would sometimes imitate this look, in discussing Armance among themselves; but these vulgar spirits robbed it of an element that they had never thought of noticing. "It is with such eyes," Madame de Mali-vert said to them one day, out of patience with their malevolence, "that a pair of angels exiled among men and obliged to disguise themselves in mortal form, would gaze at one another in mutual recognition. ~ Stendhal

She had caprices of a marvellous unexpectedness, and how is any one to imitate a caprice? ~ Stendhal

We always fail to talk about love'. He quickly scans the text – it's about Stendhal. Simon is moved by the thought of Barthes sitting at his desk, thinking about Stendhal, about love, about Italy, completely unaware that every hour spent typing this article was bringing him closer to the moment when he would be knocked over by a laundry van. ~ Laurent Binet

Mathilde returned and strolled past the drawing-room windows; she saw him busily engaged in describing to Madame de Fervaques the old ruined castles that crown the steep banks of the Rhine and give them so distinctive a character. He was beginning to acquit himself none too badly in the use of the sentimental and picturesque language which is called wit in certain drawing-rooms. ~ Stendhal

We live through myriads of seconds, yet it is always one, just one, that casts our entire inner world into turmoil, the second when (as Stendhal has described it) the internal inflorescence, already steeped in every kind of fluid, condenses and crystallizes - a magical second, like the moment of generation, and like that moment concealed in the warm interior of the individual life, invisible, untouchable, beyond the reach of feeling, a secret experienced alone. No algebra of the mind can calculate it, no alchemy of premonition divine it, and it can seldom perceive itself. ~ Stefan Zweig

Exalted by a sentiment of which she was proud, and that overcame all her arrogance, she was reluctant to let a moment of her life go by without occupying it with some remarkable deed. ~ Stendhal

Indeed, man has two different beings inside him. What devil thought of that malicious touch? ~ Stendhal

Mathilde made an effort to use the more intimate form; she was evidently more attentive to this unusual way of speaking than to what she was saying. This use of the singular form, stripped of the tone of affection, ceased, after a moment, to afford Julien any pleasure, he was astonished at the absence of happiness; finally, in order to feel it, he had recourse to his reason. He saw himself highly esteemed by this girl who was so proud, and never bestowed unrestricted praise; by this line of reasoning he arrived at a gratification of his self-esteem. ~ Stendhal

In another moment she had torn herself from his arms, lighted the candle, and Julien had all the difficulty in the world in preventing her from cutting off all one side of her hair. "I wish to remind myself," she told him, "that I am your servant: should my accursed pride ever make me forget it, show me these locks and say: "There is no question now of love, we are not concerned with the emotion that your heart may be feeling at this moment, you have sworn to obey, obey upon your honour. ~ Stendhal

Not to me," I said.
Kafka wrote his first story in one night. Stendhal wrote The
Charterhouse of Parma in forty-nine days. Melville wrote Moby-
Dick in sixteen months. Flaubert spent five years on Madame
Bovary. Musil worked for eighteen years on The Man Without
Qualities and died before he could finish. Do we care about any
of that now? ~ Paul Auster

Without patience, without absence of anger, no one can be called a politician. ~ Stendhal

Stendhal wrote that music was the highest form of art and that all the other forms really wanted to be music. This was of course a Platonic idea, all the other art forms depict something else, music is the only one that is something in itself, it was absolutely incomparable. ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

The footman burst in, announcing, 'Monsieur le Duc de
.'
'Hold your tongue, you fool,' said the Duke as he entered the room. He said this so well, and with such majesty than Julien could not help thinking that knowing how to lose his temper with a footman was the whole extent of this great personage's knowledge. ~ Stendhal

Any man who talks about his love affairs thereby proves he is ignorant of love and is moved only by vanity. ~ Stendhal

The pleasures and the cares of the luckiest ambition, even of limitless power, are nothing next to the intimate happiness that tenderness and love give. I am man before being a prince, and when I have the good fortune to be in love, my mistress addresses a man and not a prince. ~ Stendhal

To be really realistic a description would
have to be endless. Where Stendhal describes in one phrase Lucien Leuwen's entrance into a room, the
realistic artist ought, logically, to fill several volumes with descriptions of characters and settings, still
without succeeding in exhausting every detail. Realism is indefinite enumeration. By this it reveals that its
real ambition is conquest, not of the unity, but of the totality of the real world. Now we understand why it
should be the official aesthetic of a totalitarian revolution. But the impossibility of such an aesthetic has
already been demonstrated. Realistic novels select their material, despite themselves, from reality,
because the choice and the conquest of reality are absolute conditions of thought and expression. To
write is already to choose. There is thus an arbitrary aspect to reality, just as there is an arbitrary aspect to
the ideal, which makes a realistic novel an implicit problem novel. To reduce the unity of the world of
fiction to the totality of reality can only be done by means of an a priori judgment which eliminates form,
reality, and everything that conflicts with doctrine. Therefore so-called socialist realism is condemned by
the very logic of its nihilism to accumulate the advantages of the edifying novel and propaganda
literature. ~ Albert Camus

People happy in love have an air of intensity. ~ Stendhal

Has he written to you?'
'He writes frequently.'
'Shew me his letters this instant, I order you'; and M. de Renal added six feet to his stature. ~ Stendhal

Beauty is nothing other than the promise of happiness. ~ Stendhal

Women are always eagerly on the lookout for any emotion. ~ Stendhal

There's one convenience about absolute power, that it sanctifies everything in the eyes of the people. ~ Stendhal

Man is not free to refuse to do the thing which gives him more pleasure than any other conceivable action. ~ Stendhal

Such are death, life, eternity- simple phenomena for those with organs of sense vast enough to comprehend them... ~ Stendhal

Am I capable of deceiving my friend? Julien asked himself peevishly. This being, for whom hypocrisy and an absence of all sympathy were the usual methods of protecting himself, could not bear, this time, the thought of the slightest trickiness in dealing with a man for whom he had friendly feelings. ~ Stendhal

I love her beauty, but I fear her mind. ~ Stendhal

It seemed to Julian that there was far too much hair in his wig. ~ Stendhal

Love has always been the most important business in my life, I should say the only one. ~ Stendhal

The first virtue of a young man today - that is, for the next fifty years perhaps, as long as we live in fear, and religion has regained its powers - is to be incapable of enthusiasm and not to have much in the way of brains. ~ Stendhal

Love born in the brain is more spirited, doubtless, than true love, but it has only flashes of enthusiasm; it knows itself too well, it criticizes itself incessantly; so far from banishing thought, it is itself reared only upon a structure of thought. ~ Stendhal

The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same. ~ Stendhal

It never registered to them that I had time to read all of Balzac, Dickens, and Stendhal while Papa was dying, not to mention everything in the city library after Mother's operation. It would have been exactly the same to them if I had read through all twenty-six volumes of Elsie Dinsmore. (The White Azalea) ~ Elizabeth Spencer

Spring appears and we are once more children. ~ Stendhal

Life is very short, and it ought not to be spent crawling at the feet of miserable scoundrels. ~ Stendhal

Stendhal had said a Frenchman was an Italian in a bad mood. ~ Edmund White

Misery destroys judgment. ~ Stendhal

On a cold winter morning a cigar fortifies the soul. ~ Stendhal

These gentlemen, although of the highest nobility,' thought Julien, 'are not in the least boring like the people who come to dine with M. de La Mole; and I can see why,' he added a moment later,'they are not ashamed to be indecent. ~ Stendhal

To be loved at first sight, a man should have at the same time something to respect and something to pity in his face. ~ Stendhal

It is a great good fortune, as Stendhal said, for one to have his passion as a profession. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty

The idea of most use to tyrants is that of God, ~ Stendhal

War was then no longer this noble and unified outburst of souls in love with glory that he had imagined from Napoleon's proclamations. ~ Stendhal

Because one has little fear of shocking vanity in Italy, people adopt an intimate tone very quickly and discuss personal things. ~ Stendhal

Old age is nothing but the absence of madness, the loss of illusion and passion. ~ Stendhal

Proust, who did not greatly admire Flaubert, except perhaps in his narrow sense as a stylist - or perhaps only did not care very much for his work - nevertheless owed him a great deal, without realizing how much. From Flaubert he obtained the art of expressing his characters indirectly, through a monologue interieur. This method of characterization is one of Flaubert's greatest contributions to the art of fiction and, as we have seen in Madame Bovary, it is very different from the direct method of characterization practised by Balzac and Stendhal. ~ Enid Starkie

There are as many styles of beauty as there are visions of happiness. ~ Stendhal

Ah, Sir, a novel is a mirror carried along a high road. At one moment it reflects to your vision the azure skies, at another the mire of the puddles at your feet. And the man who carries this mirror in his pack will be accused by you of being immoral! His mirror shews the mire, and you blame the mirror! Rather blame that high road upon which the puddle lies, still more the inspector of roads who allows the water to gather and the puddle to form. ~ Stendhal

Love is a beautiful flower, but we must be brave enough to pick her up from the edge of a precipice. ~ Stendhal

Wounded pride can take a rich young man far who is surrounded by flatterers since birth. ~ Stendhal

Feminine delicacy was carried to excess in Mme de Renal. ~ Stendhal

Tomber amoureux. To fall in love. Does it occur suddenly or gradually? If gradually, when is the moment "already"? I would fall in love with a monkey made of rags. With a plywood squirrel. With a botanical atlas. With an oriole. With a ferret. With a marten in a picture. With the forest one sees to the right when riding in a cart to Jaszuny. With a poem by a little-known poet. With human beings whose names still move me. And always the object of love was enveloped in erotic fantasy or was submitted, as in Stendhal, to a "cristallisation," so it is frightful to think of that object as it was, naked among the naked things, and of the fairy tales about it one invents. Yes, I was often in love with something or someone. Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love. That is something different. ~ Czeslaw Milosz

The great drawback of being witty is that you have to keep your eyes fixed on the semi-idiots around you, and absorb their worthless sensations. ~ Stendhal

It seems that my destiny is to die dreaming. ~ Stendhal

Politics in the middle of things of the imagination is like a pistol shot in the middle of a concert. ~ Stendhal

I've read Proust and Stendhal. That keeps you in your place. ~ Francoise Sagan

The ordinary procedure of the nineteenth century is that when a powerful and noble personage encounters a man of feeling, he kills, exiles, imprisons or so humiliates him that the other, like a fool, dies of grief. ~ Stendhal

The English are, I think the most obtuse and barbarous people in the world ~ Stendhal

Great ladies are no more spiteful than the average rich woman; but one acquires in their society a greater susceptibility, and feels more profoundly andmore irremediably, their unpleasant remarks. ~ Stendhal

But, if I sample this pleasure so prudently and circumspectly, it will no longer be a pleasure. ~ Stendhal

The lover thinks oftener of reaching his mistress than the husband thinks of guarding his wife; the prisoner thinks more often of escape than the jailer thinks of locking the doors. Therefore, in spite of every obstacle, the lover and the prisoner are certain to succeed. ~ Stendhal

Leave me with my life of the imagination. Your petty pestering, your details of real life, which all upset me to some degree, would drag me down from heaven. Each person dies as best he may; my wish is not to think of death except in my own way. ~ Stendhal

... the loneliness ... the "inexpressibly delicious" sensation of this memory - for as memories are older they're like wine rarer, till if you find a real old memory, one of infancy, not an established often tasted one but a brand new one, it would taste better than the Napoleon brandy Stendhal himself must have stared at ... ~ Jack Kerouac

Your water does not refresh me, said the thirsty genie. Yet it is the coolest well in all the Diar Bekir. ~ Stendhal

A melancholy air can never be the right thing; what you want is a bored air. If you are melancholy, it must be because you want something, there is something in which you have not succeeded.
It is shewing your inferiority. If you are bored, on the other hand, it is the person who has tried in vain to please you who is inferior. ~ Stendhal

Love is like fever; it comes and goes without the will having any part of the process. ~ Stendhal

What was the battle? What were the aims of the romantics? Why was the subject
the focus of such violent interest?
Hugo and his generation were all 'enfants du siècle', all, give or take a year or
two, born with the century. Brought up amidst the dramas of Napoleon's wars,
they had reached manhood to the anticlimax of peace and Bourbon rule. Restless
and dissatisfied, their dreams of military glory frustrated, they had turned them-
selves instead towards the liberation of the arts, their foes no longer the armies of
Europe but the tyrannies of classical tradition.

For thirty years, while the nation's energies had been absorbed in politics and
war, the arts had virtually stood still in France, frozen, through lack of challenge, in
the classical attitudes of the old régime. The violent emotions and experiences of
the Napoleonic era had done much to render them meaningless. 'Since the cam-
paign in Russia,' said a former officer to Stendhal, 'Iphigénie en Aulide no longer
seems such a good play.'

By the 1820s while the academic establishment, hiding its own sterility behind
the great names of the past, continued to denounce all change, the ice of clas-
sicism was beginning to crack. New influences were crowding in from abroad:
Chateaubriand, the 'enchanter', had cast his spell on the rising generation; the po-
etry of Lamartine, Hugo and Vigny heralded the spring ~ Linda Kelly

Almost all our misfortunes in life come from the wrong notions we have about the things that happen to us. ~ Stendhal

The suspicion that a rival is loved is painful enough already, but to have the love that he inspires in her confessed to one in detail by the woman whom one adores is without doubt the acme of suffering. ~ Stendhal

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. ~ Stendhal

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road. ~ Stendhal

Power, after love, is the first source of happiness. ~ Stendhal

To seem sorrowful is not in good taste: You're supposed to seem bored. ~ Stendhal

Your career will be a painful one. I divine something in you which offends the vulgar. ~ Stendhal

But passion most dissembles, yet betrays, Even by its darkness; as the blackest sky Foretells the heaviest tempest. Don Juan, I. 73 ~ Stendhal

They were completely vague. They expressed everything and nothing. 'It is the Aeolian harp of style,' thought Julien. 'Amid the most lofty thoughts about annihilation, death, the infinite, etc., I can see no reality save a shocking fear of ridicule. ~ Stendhal

Logic is neither an art nor a science but a dodge. ~ Stendhal

If you don't love me, it does not matter, anyway I can love for both of us ~ Stendhal

Pendants have for two thousand years reiterated the notion that women have a more lively spirit, men more solidity; that women have more delicacy in their ideas and men greater power of attention. A Paris idler who once took a walk in the Versailles Gardens concluded that, judging from all he saw, the trees grow ready trimmed. ~ Stendhal

It is difficult to escape from the prevailing disease of one's generation. ~ Stendhal

Politics in a literary work, is like a gun shot in the middle of a concert, something vulgar, and however, something which is impossible to ignore. ~ Stendhal

The first characteristic of Rossini's music is speed - a speed which removes from the soul all the sombre emotions that are so powerfully evoked within us by the slow strains in Mozart. I find also in Rossini a cool freshness, which, measure by measure, makes us smile with delight. ~ Stendhal

Oh, if there were only a true religion. Fool that I am, I see a Gothic cathedral and venerable stained-glass windows, and my weak heart conjures up the priest to fit the scene. My soul would understand him, my soul has need of him. I only find a nincompoop with dirty hair. ~ Stendhal

It was the destiny of Napoleon - would it one day be his? ~ Stendhal

grotesque character of everyday occurrences conceals from one the real misery of passions. BARNAVE While ~ Stendhal

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. ~ Stendhal

He [Napoleon] had the defect of all parvenus -- that of having too great an opinion of the class into which he had risen. ~ Stendhal

The sight of anything extremely beautiful, in nature or in art, brings back the memory of what one loves, with the speed of lightning. ~ Stendhal

Jean Jacques Rousseauis nothing but a fool in my eyes when he takes it upon himself to criticise society; he did not understand it, and approached it with the heart of an upstart flunkey ... For all his preaching a Republic and the overthrow of monarchical titles, the upstart is mad with joy if a Duke alters the course of his after-dinner stroll to accompany one of his friends. ~ Stendhal