58 quotes
I call "crystallization" that action of the mind that discovers fresh perfections in its beloved at every turn of events.
De L'Amour (On Love) (1822)
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.
De L'Amour (On Love) (1822)
When a man leaves his mistress, he runs the risk of being betrayed two or three times daily.
Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) (1830)
One can acquire everything in solitude — except character.
De L'Amour (On Love) (1822)
Any man who talks about his love affairs thereby proves he is ignorant of love and is moved only by vanity.
Love has always been the most important business in my life; I should say the only one.
A wise woman never yields by appointment. It should always be an unforeseen happiness.
De L'Amour (On Love) (1822)
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.
Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) (1830)
Beauty is nothing other than the promise of happiness.
De L'Amour (On Love) (1822)
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.
De L'Amour (On Love) (1822)
It is better to have a prosaic husband and to take a romantic lover.
De L'Amour (On Love) (1822)
Because one has little fear of shocking vanity in Italy, people adopt an intimate tone very quickly and discuss personal things.
La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma) (1839)
Without work, the vessel of human life has no ballast.
Souvenirs d'égotisme (Memoirs of an Egotist) (1832)
The only excuse for God is that He does not exist.
Wounded pride can take a rich young man far who has been surrounded by flatterers since birth.
La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma) (1839)
A forty-year-old woman is only something to men who have loved her in her youth!
La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma) (1839)
Prudery is a kind of avarice, the worst of all.
De L'Amour (On Love) (1822)
What is really beautiful must always be true.
Armance (1827)
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.
De L'Amour (On Love) (1822)
Almost all our misfortunes in life come from the wrong notions we have about the things that happen to us. To know men thoroughly, to judge events sanely, is, therefore, a great step towards happiness.