Stendhal
The only unhappiness is a life of boredom.Collection: Boredom
It is difficult to escape from the prevailing disease of one's generation.Collection: Generations
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.Collection: Doors
Love is like a fever which comes and goes quite independently of the will. ... there are no age limits for love.Collection: Love
I see but one rule: to be clear. If I am not clear, all my world crumbles to nothing.Collection: World
...one of the traits of genius is not to drag its thought through the rut worn by vulgar minds.Collection: Mind
If you want to be witty, work on your character and say what you think on every occasion.Collection: Witty
The tyranny of public opinion (and what an opinion!) is as fatuous in the small towns of France as it is in the United States of America.Collection: America
Beauty is nothing but a promise of happiness.Collection: Promise
A good book is an event in my life.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Eye
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.Collection: Expression
Faith, I am no such fool; everyone for himself in this desert of selfishness which is called life.Collection: Selfishness
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 heCollection: Men
The sight of anything extremely beautiful, in nature or in art, brings back the memory of what one loves, with the speed of lightning.Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: Clever
Man is not free to refuse to do the thing which gives him more pleasure than any other conceivable action.Collection: Men
Love has always been the most important business in my life; I should say the only one.Collection: Important
In our calling, we have to choose; we must make our fortune either in this world or in the next, there is no middle way.Collection: Success
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.Collection: Play
One-half, the finest half, of life is hidden from the man who does not love with passion.Collection: Love
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.Collection: God
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.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Struggle
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.Collection: Impact
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.Collection: Logical Reasoning
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.Collection: Husband
I used to think of deathlike I suppose soldiers think of it: it was a possible thing that I could well avoid by my skill.Collection: Thinking
I think being condemned to death is the only real distinction," said Mathilde. "It is the only thing which cannot be bought.Collection: Real
Far less envy in America than in France.Collection: America
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.Collection: Powerful
Napoleon was indeed the man sent by God to help the youth of France! Who is to take his place?Collection: Hero
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.Collection: Lying