Stendhal Quotes

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

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

Love is a well from which we can drink only as much as we have put in, and the stars that shine from it are only our eyes looking in.

Beauty is nothing other than the promise of happiness.

Life is very short, and it ought not to be spent crawling at the feet of miserable scoundrels.

Almost all our misfortunes in life come from the wrong notions we have about the things that happen to us.

One can acquire everything in solitude except character.

Only great minds can afford a simple style.

Women prefer emotions to reasoning.

A woman of generous character will sacrifice her life a thousand times over for her lover, but will break with him for ever over a question of pride.

Spring appears and we are once more children.

When you want to court a woman, court her sister first

I love her beauty, but I fear her mind.

The idea which tyrants find most useful is the idea of God.

It is from cowardice and not from want of enlightenment that we do not read in our own hearts.

A novel is like a bow, and the violin that produces the sound is the reader's soul.

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.

What is really beautiful must always be true.

There are as many styles of beauty as there are visions of happiness.

Logic is neither an art nor a science but a dodge.

The more one pleases everybody, the less one pleases profoundly.

Love is like fever; it comes and goes without the will having any part of the process.

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

A very small matter, when all is said; only a fool would be concerned about it.

To describe happiness is to diminish it.