Stendhal
Stendhal
Marie-Henri Beyle, better known by his pen name Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. Best known for the novels Le Rouge et le Noirand La Chartreuse de Parme, he is highly regarded for the acute analysis of his characters' psychology and considered one of the earliest and foremost practitioners of realism...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth23 January 1783
CountryFrance
thinking people insulting
The English are, I think the most obtuse and barbarous people in the world
clever people energy
I no longer find such pleasure in that preeminently good society, of which I was once so fond. It seems to me that beneath a cloak of clever talk it proscribes all energy, all originality. If you are not a copy, people accuse you of being ill-mannered.
war people soul
War was then no longer this noble and unified outburst of souls in love with glory that he had imagined from Napoleon's proclamations.
vanity people littles
Because one has little fear of shocking vanity in Italy, people adopt an intimate tone very quickly and discuss personal things.
reading people suffering
People who have been made to suffer by certain things cannot be reminded of them without a horror which paralyses every other pleasure, even that to be found in reading a story.
imitate marvelous
She had caprices of a marvelous unexpectedness, and how is any one to imitate a caprice?
logical-reasoning pieces offensive
Chélan had acted as imprudently for Julien as he had for himself. He had given him the habit of reasoning correctly, and of not being put off by empty words, but he had neglected to tell him that this habit was a crime in the person of no importance, since every piece of logical reasoning is offensive.
wisdom ugly enough
I do not feel I have wisdom enough yet to love what is ugly.
ambition men years
The first virtue of a young man today - that is, for the next fifty years perhaps, as long as we live in fear, and religion has regained its powers - is to be incapable of enthusiasm and not to have much in the way of brains.
book ignorance thinking
Conversationis like the table of contents of a dull book.... All the greatest subjects of human thought are proudly displayedin it. Listen to it for three minutes, and you ask yourself which is more striking, the emphasis of the speaker or his shocking ignorance.
marriage heart history
A strange effect of marriage, such as the nineteenth century has made it! The boredom of married life inevitably destroys love, when love has preceded marriage. And yet, as a philosopher has observed, it speedily brings about, among people who are rich enough not to have to work, an intense boredom with all quiet forms of enjoyment. And it is only dried up hearts, among women, that it does not predispose to love.
success calling world
In our calling, we have to choose; we must make our fortune either in this world or in the next, there is no middle way.
women average society
Great ladies are no more spiteful than the average rich woman; but one acquires in their society a greater susceptibility, and feels more profoundly andmore irremediably, their unpleasant remarks.
running women two
When a man leaves his mistress, he runs the risk of being betrayed two or three times daily.