Stendhal Quotes

99 quotes in 963 categories

• 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…
• Prudery is a kind of avarice, the worst of all.
• The only unhappiness is a life of boredom.
• Almost all our misfortunes in life come from the wrong notions we have about the things that happen to us.
• 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…
• The sight of anything extremely beautiful, in nature or in art, brings back the memory of what one loves, with the speed of lightning.
• I call 'crystallization' that action of the mind that discovers fresh perfections in its beloved at every turn of events.
• Man is not free to refuse to do the thing which gives him more pleasure than any other conceivable action.
• Who knows whether it is not true that phosphorus and mind are not the same thing?
• I do not feel I have wisdom enough yet to love what is ugly.
• One can acquire everything in solitude except character.
• A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love.
• If you don't love me, it does not matter, anyway I can love for both of us.
• Life is too short, and the time we waste in yawning never can be regained.
• The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.
• Only great minds can afford a simple style.
• All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.
• People happy in love have an air of intensity.
• This is the curse of our age, even the strangest aberrations are no cure for boredom.
• Power, after love, is the first source of happiness.

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