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
love age limits
Love is like a fever which comes and goes quite independently of the will. ... there are no age limits for love.
writing soul violin
A novel is like a bow, and the violin that produces the sound is the reader's soul.
tyrants ideas
The idea which tyrants find most useful is the idea of God.
love positive valentines-day
A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love.
character community solitude
One can acquire everything in solitude except character.
men giving action
Man is not free to refuse to do the thing which gives him more pleasure than any other conceivable action.
thinking people insulting
The English are, I think the most obtuse and barbarous people in the world
book ignorance thinking
Conversationis like the table of contents of a dull book.... All the greatest subjects of human thought are proudly displayedin it. Listen to it for three minutes, and you ask yourself which is more striking, the emphasis of the speaker or his shocking ignorance.
heart eye mad
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.
men thinking ruins
If you think of paying court to the men in power, your eternal ruin is assured.
men two devil
Indeed, man has two different beings inside him. What devil thought of that malicious touch?
real thinking distinction
I think being condemned to death is the only real distinction," said Mathilde. "It is the only thing which cannot be bought.
wisdom ugly enough
I do not feel I have wisdom enough yet to love what is ugly.
play tables pistols
An English traveller relates how he lived upon intimate terms with a tiger; he had reared it and used to play with it, but always kept a loaded pistol on the table.