Stendhal
Stendhal
Marie-Henri Beyle, better known by his pen name Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. Best known for the novels Le Rouge et le Noirand La Chartreuse de Parme, he is highly regarded for the acute analysis of his characters' psychology and considered one of the earliest and foremost practitioners of realism...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth23 January 1783
CountryFrance
spy language human-nature
Signs cannot be represented, in a spy's report, so damningly as words.
emotion reasoning
Women prefer emotions to reasoning.
world clear ifs
I see but one rule: to be clear. If I am not clear, all my world crumbles to nothing.
clever people energy
I no longer find such pleasure in that preeminently good society, of which I was once so fond. It seems to me that beneath a cloak of clever talk it proscribes all energy, all originality. If you are not a copy, people accuse you of being ill-mannered.
passion thinking very-true
Every true passion thinks only of itself.
love passion men
One-half, the finest half, of life is hidden from the man who does not love with passion.
interesting landscape moral
It is not enough for a landscape to be interesting in itself. Eventually there must be a moral and historic interest.
please
The more one pleases everybody, the less one pleases profoundly.
imagination pistols shots
Politics in the middle of things of the imagination is like a pistol shot in the middle of a concert.
bored taste sorrowful
To seem sorrowful is not in good taste: You're supposed to seem bored.
suicide grief feelings
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.
family heart self
People are less self-conscious in the intimacy of family life and during the anxiety of a great sorrow. The dazzling varnish of anextreme politeness is then less in evidence, and the true qualities of the heart regain their proper proportions.
firsts want court
When you want to court a woman, court her sister first
expression law suffering
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.