Quotes from 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.

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.

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

On a cold winter morning a cigar fortifies the soul.

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

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

Napoleon was indeed the man sent by God to help the youth of France! Who is to take his place?

God's only excuse is that he does not exist

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

To describe happiness is to diminish it.

Beauty is nothing but a promise of happiness.

The first qualification for a historian is to have no ability to invent.

At a distance, we cannot conceive of the authority of a despot who knows all his subjects on sight.

Never had he found himself so close to those terrible weapons of feminine artillery.

This religion takes away the courage of thinking of unusual things and prohibits self-examination above all as the most egregiousof sins.... It is one step away from protestantism.

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

It is better to have a prosaic husband and to take a romantic lover.

A woman of generous character will sacrifice her life a thousand times over for her lover, but will break with him for ever over a question of pride.

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

Life is too short, and the time we waste in yawning never can be regained.

The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.

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.

Faith, I am no such fool; everyone for himself in this desert of selfishness which is called life.

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.