Quotes from Stendhal

A novel is a mirror that strolls along a highway. Now it reflects the blue of the skies, now the mud puddles underfoot.

I see but one rule: to be clear. If I am not clear, all my world crumbles to nothing.

There 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.

A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love.

If you think of paying court to the men in power, your eternal ruin is assured.

A good book is an event in my life.

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

A wise woman never yields by appointment. It should always be an unforeseen happiness.

To describe happiness is to diminish it.

I call "crystallization" that action of the mind that discovers fresh perfections in its beloved at every turn of events.

The more a race is governed by its passions, the less it has acquired the habit of cautious and reasoned argument, the more intense will be its love of music.

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.

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

Friendship has its illusions no less than love.

Prudery is a kind of avarice, the worst of all.

This is the curse of our age, even the strangest aberrations are no cure for boredom.

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

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

Women are always eagerly on the lookout for any emotion.

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.

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

Courtiers of all ages feel one great need: to speak in such a way that they do not say anything.

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

The count had reached his fifties: a cruel word whose resonance can perhaps be fully appreciated only by a man desperately in love.