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
fashion obsolete hideous
Nothing is so hideous as an obsolete fashion.
spoiled pleasure describing
Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it.
promise
Beauty is nothing other than the promise of happiness.
fashion simple simplicity
Only great minds can afford a simple style.
love fever process
Love is like fever; it comes and goes without the will having any part of the process.
firsts ability historian
The first qualification for a historian is to have no ability to invent.
mind ruts genius
...one of the traits of genius is not to drag its thought through the rut worn by vulgar minds.
distance eyebrows years
The Russians imitate French ways, but always at a distance of fifty years.
husband revenge blow
It is with blows dealt by public contempt that a husband kills his wife in the nineteenth century; it is by shutting the doors ofall the drawing-rooms in her face.
boredom married inevitable
The boredom of married life inevitable destroys love, when love has preceded marriage.
generations disease prevailing
It is difficult to escape from the prevailing disease of one's generation.
beauty men passionate-love
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.
distance power sight
At a distance, we cannot conceive of the authority of a despot who knows all his subjects on sight.
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.