Great Throughts Treasury

"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."

"In Paris, Julien’s position with regard to Madame de Renal would very soon have been simplified; but in Paris love is the child of the novels. The young tutor and his timid mistress would have found in three or four novels, and even in the lyrics of the Gymnase, a clear statement of their situation. The novels would have outlined for them the part to be played, shown them the model to copy; and this model, sooner or later, albeit without the slightest pleasure, and perhaps with reluctance, vanity would have compelled Julien to follow."

"In the choice of a lover a woman places more importance on how other women view him than on how she herself sees him."

"Indeed, man has two different beings inside him. What devil thought of that malicious touch?"

"It is not so much of being rich that makes the happiness of the future."

"It is shewing your inferiority. If you are bored, on the other hand, it is the person who has tried in vain to please you who is inferior."

"It is the nobility of their style which will make our writers of 1840 unreadable forty years from now."

"It seemed to Julian that there was far too much hair in his wig."

"It was the destiny of Napoleon - would it one day be his?"

"Julien felt himself to be strong and resolute like a man who sees clearly into his own heart."

"Life is too short, and the time we waste in yawning can never be regained."

"Logic is neither an art nor a science but a dodge."

"Love born in the brain is more spirited, doubtless, than true love, but it has only flashes of enthusiasm; it knows itself too well, it criticizes itself incessantly; so far from banishing thought, it is itself reared only upon a structure of thought."

"Love has always been the most important business in my life, I should say the only one."

"Love the people are equal, do not attempt."

"Mathematics allows for no hypocrisy and no vagueness."

"Mathilde made an effort to use the more intimate form; she was evidently more attentive to this unusual way of speaking than to what she was saying. This use of the singular form, stripped of the tone of affection, ceased, after a moment, to afford Julien any pleasure, he was astonished at the absence of happiness; finally, in order to feel it, he had recourse to his reason. He saw himself highly esteemed by this girl who was so proud, and never bestowed unrestricted praise; by this line of reasoning he arrived at a gratification of his self-esteem."

"Mathilde returned and strolled past the drawing-room windows; she saw him busily engaged in describing to Madame de Fervaques the old ruined castles that crown the steep banks of the Rhine and give them so distinctive a character. He was beginning to acquit himself none too badly in the use of the sentimental and picturesque language which is called wit in certain drawing-rooms."

"Monfleury is on sale, I lose fifty thousand francs, if necessary, but I'm happy, I leave this hell of hypocrisy and harassment. I seek solitude and peace at only country where they exist in France, a fourth floor overlooking the Champs-Élysées."

"My style will acquire a specific character from the moment when it will not bother anything, to be exact, will not sleep. directly to court a woman that is the dumbest thing you want. That's why a woman would only untouched by vanity. and vanity of women is common place all philosophers. A and B are two sisters: If you like A like you really need to start by making court's B. .. arriving at the inn, I found there two rosy-cheeked young girl. both were nice. I grabbed her ass in the least pretty, I could have [..] but I thought it would be imprudent at the very beginning of the campaign. anyway I wasted all that melancholy which gnawed at me since I left and I was happy Pforzheim to Stuttgart. during his life the way I read Alfieri, vol 2. pretend you're a month or two but eventually all true character is revealed: we women do not necessarily hold. Martial had between 18 and 31 years, about 22 women, 12 of whom indeed after an amorous intrigue. I am 25 years old and over 10 years I have probably 6 women. I have also 20 horses now and until I will not be able to ride because of age. spirit is it substance or quality - put together with the bodily eye, eye consequence of existence? Locke's principle that all ideas come to us through the senses, and passions anatomy as shown in Helvetius prove that man can not see any effect in the soul, there are only effects of the senses, that there seem consequent soul. these two portraits of the Emperor are really great, but made ??him Appian lighting. apparently not conceive otherwise genius painters. the superior understanding that surprise humanly possible real relations between things and events with a dominating cold caution, they remain invisible. inconsistency is found that the sensitivity, the author [Schiller] not sufficiently deepened major ideas at last that his characters I have enough spirit [esprit]. them except some lengths to end pieces are good. but sensitivity founded on a series of vague ideas and swollen, like that of Werther, it seems a consequence of a specific nation spirit, does not touch me. Well the Germans cold explaining their food: black bread, butter, milk and beer. coffee yet but should drink wine, and since most, for animate them bloated muscles. Bible reading and then helped her to be silly and emphatic. Because it's actually acting and the British character. but the greatest rulers of the 18th century, Frederick II and Catherine II, belonged to this nation. - Stendhal , The Private Diaries of Stendhal"

"Never had he found himself so close to those terrible weapons of feminine artillery."

"Nothing is so hideous as an obsolete fashion."

"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."

"One half, the finest half of life, is hidden from the man who does not love with passion."

"One of the most painful moments of his life was when, every morning when he awoke, he learned his misfortune."

"One of the traits of genius is not to drag its thought through the rut worn by vulgar minds."

"Our true passions are selfish."

"People are less self-conscious in the intimacy of family life and during the anxiety of a great sorrow. The dazzling varnish of an extreme politeness is then less in evidence, and the true qualities of the heart regain their proper proportions."

"People happy in love have an air of intensity"

"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."

"Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it."

"Politics in a literary work, is like a gun shot in the middle of a concert, something vulgar, and however, something which is impossible to ignore."

"Politics in the middle of things of the imagination is like a pistol shot in the middle of a concert."

"Politics in the middle of things that concern the imagination are like a pistol-shot in the middle of a concert... Le Rouge et le noir."

"Power, after love, is the first source of happiness"

"She had caprices of a marvelous unexpectedness, and how is any one to imitate a caprice?"

"Shew me his letters this instant, I order you; and M. de Renal added six feet to his stature."

"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."

"Sometimes the impact of Mozart's music is so immediate that the vision in the mind remains blurred and incomplete, while the soul seems to be directly invaded, drenched in wave upon wave of melancholy."

"Suspect is like a rival is already cruel, but confess in detail see the love he inspires the woman you love is probably the ultimate pain."

"The first characteristic of Rossini's music is speed — a speed which removes from the soul all the sombre emotions that are so powerfully evoked within us by the slow strains in Mozart. I find also in Rossini a cool freshness, which, measure by measure, makes us smile with delight."

"The first qualification for a historian is to have no ability to invent."

"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."

"The French are the wittiest, the most charming, and up to the present, at all events, the least musical race on Earth."

"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."

"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."

"The more a race is governed by its passions, the less it has acquired the habit of cautious and reasoned argument, the more intense will be its love of music."

"The only excuse for God is that He does not exist."

"The only unhappiness is a life of boredom."

"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."