Inspirational Quotes 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.

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