58 quotes
I see but one rule: to be clear. If I am not clear, all my world crumbles to nothing.
I am deeply convinced that the only antidote that can make the reader forget the eternal Is that the author will write is a perfect sincerity.
Souvenirs d'égotisme (Memoirs of an Egotist) (1832)
It is with blows dealt by public contempt that a husband kills his wife in the nineteenth century; it is by shutting the doors of all the drawing-rooms in her face.
Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) (1830)
This religion takes away the courage of thinking of unusual things and prohibits self-examination above all as the most egregious of sins; it is a step towards protestantism.
La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma) (1839)
Napoleon was indeed the man sent by God to help the youth of France! Who is to take his place?
Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) (1830)
There is no such thing as "natural law": this expression is nothing but old nonsense... Prior to laws, what is natural is only the strength of the lion, or the need of the creature suffering from hunger or cold, in short, need.
Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) (1830)
Our true passions are selfish.
Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) (1830)
Society being divided in strips like bamboo, the great business of a man is to ascend to the class superior to his own, and all the effort of this class is to prevent him from ascending.
Souvenirs d'égotisme (Memoirs of an Egotist) (1832)
Wit lasts no more than two centuries.
He wished me dead. It did not occur to me any more to become angry or to venerate him less than it did to blaspheme against the sun when it's covered by a cloud.
Souvenirs d'égotisme (Memoirs of an Egotist) (1832)
Now that the steam engine rules the world, a title is an absurdity, still I am all dressed up in this title. It will crush me if I do not support it. The title attracts attention to myself.
Armance (1827)
As falling into an impropriety of speech is much more fatal to a young man than it is advantageous to utter a pretty word, posterity, probably less silly, will have no less idea of the insipidity of good company.
Souvenirs d'égotisme (Memoirs of an Egotist) (1832)
I forgot to illustrate this salon. Sir Walter Scott, and his imitators, would have started with that, but for me, I abhor material description. The trouble of making them prevents me from writing novels.
Souvenirs d'égotisme (Memoirs of an Egotist) (1832)
He [the young pianist] had learned to admire such piece, the prime quality was always, in a sound, to be in tune, in a phrase, to be flawless. To my eyes, the prime quality, by quite far, is to be expressive.
Souvenirs d'égotisme (Memoirs of an Egotist) (1832)
Were I to buy this life of pleasure and this only chance at happiness with a few little dangers, where would be the harm? And wouldn’t it still be fortunate to find a weak excuse to give her proof of my love?
La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma) (1839)
Literary men say, "In foreign countries, one can have ingenious thoughts, but one merely knows how to make a book in France." Yes, if the only goal of a book is to make an idea understood, not if it hopes to also make one feel, give some nuance of emotion.
Souvenirs d'égotisme (Memoirs of an Egotist) (1832)
Why does he not know how to select servants? The ordinary procedure of the nineteenth century is that when a powerful and noble personage encounters a man of feeling, he kills, exiles, imprisons or so humiliates him that the other, like a fool, dies of grief.
Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) (1830)
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.