Stendhal quotes
Art quotes search by Author:

Join thousands of others and get the twice-weekly art letter.
Subscription is free.

Absolutely free, no strings. Sign up to the twice-weekly letter and join our art community.

art quotes

Stendhal Quotes



Quotes by Stendhal - (37 quotes)

Stendhal - From the Ability category:

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)

Stendhal - From the Beauty category:

The sight of anything extremely beautiful, in nature or in art, brings back the memory of what one loves, with the speed of lightning. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Books category:

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)

Stendhal - From the Boredom category:

This is the curse of our age, that even the strangest aberrations are no cure for boredom. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Business category:

Love has always been the most important business in my life - I should say the only one. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Culture category:

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)

Stendhal - From the Fashion category:

Nothing is so hideous as an obsolete fashion. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Friendship category:

Friendship has its illusions no less than love. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Gender category:

Women are always eagerly on the lookout for any emotion. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Generosity category:

The more one pleases everybody, the less one pleases profoundly. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Genius category:

The man of genius is he and he alone who finds such joy in his art that he will work at it come hell or high water. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Happiness category:

Beauty is the promise of happiness. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Happiness category:

To describe happiness is to diminish it. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Hope category:

A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Imitation category:

She had caprices of a marvelous unexpectedness, and how is any one to imitate a caprice? (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Leadership category:

The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Love category:

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)

Stendhal - From the Love category:

The pleasures of love are always in proportion to our fears. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Mirrors category:

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Morality category:

Prudery is a kind of avarice, the worst of all. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Music category:

I think no woman I have had ever gave me so sweet a moment, or at so light a price, as the moment I owe to a newly heard musical phrase. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Passion category:

In love, unlike most other passions, the recollection of what you have had and lost is always better than what you can hope for in the future. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Perfection category:

I call 'crystallization' that action of the mind that discovers fresh perfections in its beloved at every turn of events. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Pleasure category:

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

Stendhal - From the Pleasure category:

Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Power category:

Power, after love, is the first source of happiness. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Questions category:

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

Stendhal - From the Religion category:

God's only excuse is that he does not exist. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Religion category:

All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Solitude category:

One can acquire everything in solitude except character. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Style category:

Only great minds can afford a simple style. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Style category:

It is the nobility of their style which will make our writers of 1840 unreadable forty years from now. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Thought category:

Logic is neither an art nor a science but a dodge. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Time category:

Life is too short, and the time we waste in yawning never can be regained. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Wisdom category:

I do not feel I have wisdom enough yet to love what is ugly. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Words category:

To describe happiness is to diminish it. (Stendhal)

Stendhal - From the Writing category:

The first qualification for a historian is to have no ability to invent. (Stendhal)