Quotes by Stendhal - Page 3

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.
Stendhal / Writer
Politics
Gun
Impossible
Middle
Vulgar
Shot
Concert
Literary
However
Ignore
Literary Work
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A novel is a mirror which passes over a highway. Sometimes it reflects to your eyes the blue of the skies, at others the churned-up mud of the road.
Stendhal / Writer
Blue
Eye
Mirrors
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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.
Stendhal / Writer
Character
Pride
Sacrifice
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Every great action is extreme when it is undertaken. Only after it has been accomplished does it seem possible to those creatures of more common stuff.
Stendhal / Writer
Deeds
Doe
Stuff
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True love makes the thought of death frequent, easy, without terrors; it merely becomes the standard of comparison, the price one would pay for many things.
Stendhal / Writer
Love
True Love
Comparison
Easy
Pay
Standards
Frequent
Merely
Standard
Price
Terrors
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In matters of sentiment, the public has very crude ideas; and the most shocking fault of women is that they make the public the supreme judge of their lives.
Stendhal / Writer
Ideas
Judging
Matter
Copy Quote
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.
Stendhal / Writer
Argument
Cautious
Habit
Intense
Passion
Race
Acquired
Love Music Will
Governed
Passions
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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.
Stendhal / Writer
Beauty
Men
Passionate Love
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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.
Stendhal / Writer
Blow
Husband
Revenge
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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.
Stendhal / Writer
Pistols
Play
Tables
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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
Stendhal / Writer
Imagination
Men
Half
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The great majority of men, especially in France, both desire and possess a fashionable woman, much in the way one might own a fine horse - as a luxury befitting a young man.
Stendhal / Writer
Men
Desire
Fashion
Fashionable
Fine
France
Horse
Luxury
Majority
Might
Young Man
Men Great Man
Great Majority
Possess
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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.
Stendhal / Writer
Horror
People
Pleasure
Reading
Suffering
Certain Things
Reminded
Suffer
Copy Quote
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.
Stendhal / Writer
Self
Thinking
Unusual Things
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To find love in Paris you must go down among those classes where the absence of education and of vanity, and the struggle for bare necessities, have allowed more energy to survive.
Stendhal / Writer
Class
Struggle
Vanity
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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.
Stendhal / Writer
Feelings
Grief
Suicide
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Now that the steam engine rules the world, a title is an absurdity, still I am all dressed up in this title. It will crush me if Ido not support it. The title attracts attention to myself.
Stendhal / Writer
Equality
Society
Crush
Support
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Great ladies are no more spiteful than the average rich woman; but one acquires in their society a greater susceptibility, and feels more profoundly andmore irremediably, their unpleasant remarks.
Stendhal / Writer
Women
Society
Average
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Sometimes the impact of Mozart's music is so immediate that the vision in the mind remains blurred and incomplete, while the soul seems to be directly invaded, drenched in wave upon wave of melancholy.
Stendhal / Writer
Impact
Mind
Soul
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The ordinary procedure of the nineteenth century is that when a powerful and noble personage encounters a man of feeling, he kills, exiles, imprisons or so humiliates him that the other, like a fool, dies of grief.
Stendhal / Writer
Men
Grief
Powerful
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The first virtue of a young man today - that is, for the next fifty years perhaps, as long as we live in fear, and religion has regained its powers - is to be incapable of enthusiasm and not to have much in the way of brains.
Stendhal / Writer
Men
Ambition
Years
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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.
Stendhal / Writer
Expression
Law
Suffering
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For the future, I shall rely only upon those elements of my character which I have tested. Who would ever have said that I should find pleasure in shedding tears? That I should love the man who proves to me that I am nothing more than a fool?
Stendhal / Writer
Men
Character
Tears
Copy Quote
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.
Stendhal / Writer
Family
Quality
Heart
People
Self
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Love born in the brain is more spirited, doubtless, than true love, but it has only flashes of enthusiasm; it knows itself too well, it criticizes itself incessantly; so far from banishing thought, it is itself reared only upon a structure of thought.
Stendhal / Writer
Brain
Enthusiasm
Structure
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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.
Stendhal / Writer
Clever
Energy
People
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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.
Stendhal / Writer
Book
Ignorance
Thinking
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The pleasures and the cares of the luckiest ambition, even of limitless power, are nothing next to the intimate happiness that tenderness and love give. I am man before being a prince, and when I have the good fortune to be in love, my mistress addresses a man and not a prince.
Stendhal / Writer
Power
Men
Ambition
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The first characteristic of Rossini's music is speed - a speed which removes from the soul all the sombre emotions that are so powerfully evoked within us by the slow strains in Mozart. I find also in Rossini a cool freshness, which, measure by measure, makes us smile with delight.
Stendhal / Writer
Delight
Firsts
Soul
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Chélan had acted as imprudently for Julien as he had for himself. He had given him the habit of reasoning correctly, and of not being put off by empty words, but he had neglected to tell him that this habit was a crime in the person of no importance, since every piece of logical reasoning is offensive.
Stendhal / Writer
Logical Reasoning
Offensive
Pieces
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If I meet the Christian Deity, I am lost: He is a tyrant and as such, is full of ideas of vengeance; His Bible speaks of nothing but fearful punishments. I never loved Him! I could never even believe that anyone did love Him sincerely. He is devoid of pity.... He will punish me in some abominable manner.
Stendhal / Writer
God
Believe
Christian
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A melancholy air can never be the right thing; what you want is a bored air. If you are melancholy, it must be because you want something, there is something in which you have not succeeded. It is shewing your inferiority. If you are bored, on the other hand, it is the person who has tried in vain to please you who is inferior.
Stendhal / Writer
Air
Hands
Want Something
Copy Quote
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.
Stendhal / Writer
Eye
Heart
Mad
Copy Quote
A strange effect of marriage, such as the nineteenth century has made it! The boredom of married life inevitably destroys love, when love has preceded marriage. And yet, as a philosopher has observed, it speedily brings about, among people who are rich enough not to have to work, an intense boredom with all quiet forms of enjoyment. And it is only dried up hearts, among women, that it does not predispose to love.
Stendhal / Writer
Marriage
Boredom
Heart
Copy Quote
Ah, Sir, a novel is a mirror carried along a high road. At one moment it reflects to your vision the azure skies, at another the mire of the puddles at your feet. And the man who carries this mirror in his pack will be accused by you of being immoral! His mirror shews the mire, and you blame the mirror! Rather blame that high road upon which the puddle lies, still more the inspector of roads who allows the water to gather and the puddle to form.
Stendhal / Writer
Men
Feet
Lying
Copy Quote

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Stendhal Quotes - Page 3

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