223 Quotes by Stendhal

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.

Who knows whether it is not true that phosphorus and mind are not the same thing?

Man is not free to refuse to do the thing which gives him more pleasure than any other conceivable action.

The English are, I think the most obtuse and barbarous people in the world

It is better to have a prosaic husband and to take a romantic lover.

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.

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.

Napoleon was indeed the man sent by God to help the youth of France! Who is to take his place?