223 Quotes by Stendhal

Love is a beautiful flower, but we must be brave enough to pick her up from the edge of a precipice.

La belleza es la promesa de la felicidad.

Prestige! Sir, is it nothing? To be revered by fools, gaped at by children, envied by the rich and scorned by the wise.

These gentlemen, although of the highest nobility,′ thought Julien, ‘are not in the least boring like the people who come to dine with M. de La Mole; and I can see why,’ he added a moment later,’they are not ashamed to be indecent.

Punish me for my atrocious pride,” she said to him, squeezing him in her arms as though to strangle him; “you are my master, I am your slave, I must beg pardon upon my knees for having sought to rebel.” She slipped from his embrace to fall at his feet. “Yes, you are my master,” she said again, intoxicated with love and joy; “reign over me for ever, punish your slave severely when she seeks to rebel.

It seemed to Julian that there was far too much hair in his wig.

They can only touch the heart by bruising it.

The lover thinks oftener of reaching his mistress than the husband thinks of guarding his wife; the prisoner thinks more often of escape than the jailer thinks of locking the doors. Therefore, in spite of every obstacle, the lover and the prisoner are certain to succeed.

Leave me with my life of the imagination. Your petty pestering, your details of real life, which all upset me to some degree, would drag me down from heaven. Each person dies as best he may; my wish is not to think of death except in my own way.