Skip links

Inspirational Quotations

by RightAttitudes.com

Inspirational Quotes by Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle) (French Writer)

Inspirational Quotations by Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle) (French Writer)

Marie Henri Beyle (1783–1842,) who wrote under the pseudonym Stendhal, was a French novelist. He also wrote prolifically in many prose genres: travel literature, essays, journalism, art history, biography, and autobiography.

Regarded as a major precursor of psychological realism, Stendhal is best known for his rigorous self-analysis and the internal and external conflicts that he embodied in his novels. Stendhal’s intimate presentations of individual consciousness greatly influenced the works of Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Albert Camus.

Born in provincial Grenoble, in the French Alps, Stendhal lived through the French Revolution, Napoleon’s rise and fall, and the Bourbon Restoration. The political tumults of each period affected his formation and development.

Stendhal’s literary life started with criticism and biography. After the fall of Napoleon, Stendhal published Lives of Haydn, Mozart and Mitastase (1815,) and History of Painting in Italy, and Rome, Naples, and Florence (1817.)

As a novelist, Stendhal is recognized for his two masterpieces: Le Rouge et le noir (1830; The Red and the Black,) which follows the rise and fall of Julien Sorel in the France of the Bourbon Restoration, and La Chartreuse de Parme (1839; The Charterhouse of Parma,) which narrates the fortunes of Fabrice del Dongo at a minor Italian court during the same period.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)

All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.
—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)
Topics: Religion

Nothing is so hideous as an obsolete fashion.
—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)
Topics: Fashion

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 (Marie-Henri Beyle)
Topics: Love

Beauty is the promise of happiness.
—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)
Topics: Beauty, Happiness

A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love.
—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)
Topics: Love

Since I am a man, my heart is three or four times less sensitive, because I have three or four times as much power of reason and experience of the world—a thing which you women call hard-heartedness. As a man, I can take refuge in having mistresses. The more of them I have, and the greater the scandal, the more I acquire reputation and brilliance in society.
—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)
Topics: Men

One can acquire everything in solitude but character.
—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)
Topics: Solitude

People happy in love have an air of intensity.
—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)

The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.
—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)
Topics: Vision, Leaders, Leadership

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 (Marie-Henri Beyle)
Topics: Love

Every great action is extreme when it is undertaken.
Only after it has been accomplished does it seem
possible to those creatures of more common stuff.
—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)
Topics: Action

Women are always eagerly on the lookout for any emotion
—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)
Topics: Women

Almost all our misfortunes in life come from the wrong notions we have about the things that happen to us.
—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)

The only unhappiness is a life of boredom.
—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)
Topics: Boredom

A novel is a mirror carried along a high road. At one moment it reflects to your vision the azure skies at another the mire of the puddles at your feet. And the man who carries this mirror in his pack will be accused by you of being immoral! His mirror shews the mire, and you blame the mirror! Rather blame that high road upon which the puddle lies, still more the inspector of roads who allows the water to gather and the puddle to form.
—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)

The great majority of men, especially in France, both desire and possess a fashionable woman, much in the way one might own a fine horse—as a luxury befitting a young man.
—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)
Topics: Men & Women

Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it.
—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)
Topics: Pleasure

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

Only great minds can afford a simple style.
—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)
Topics: Fashion, One liners

The great majority of men, especially in France, both desire and possess a fashionable woman, much in the way one might own a fine horse—as a luxury befitting a young man.
—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)
Topics: Luxury, Men and Women

Mathematics allows for no hypocrisy and no vagueness
—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)
Topics: One liners, Hypocrisy

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.
—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)
Topics: Books, Reading

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 (Marie-Henri Beyle)
Topics: Music

To describe happiness is to diminish it.
—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)
Topics: Happiness

A wise woman never yields by appointment. It should always be an unforeseen happiness.
—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)
Topics: Seduction

Logic is neither an art nor a science but a dodge
—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)
Topics: Logic

Far less envy in America than in France, and far less wit.
—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)
Topics: Wit, One liners

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 (Marie-Henri Beyle)
Topics: Genius

Wondering Whom to Read Next?