Stendhal

“The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.”

“People happy in love have an air of intensity.”

“A melancholy air can never be the right thing; what you want is a bored air. If you are melancholy, it must be because you want something, there is something in which you have not succ”

“All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.”

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

“Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it.”

“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.”

“For the future, I shall rely only upon those elements of my character which I have tested. Who would ever have said that I should find pleasure in shedding tears? That I should love the man who proves to me that I am nothing more than a fool?”

“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 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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love.”

“שיוויון האישה הוא סימן וודאי של ציביליזציה המכפיל את כוחו האינטלקטואלי של המין האנושי.”

“צרפת היא מדינה שבה חשוב יותר להביע דעה על הומרוס מאשר לקרוא אותו.”

“הגורל אוחז בנו בשיער, אך הוא עצמו קירח.”

“בן הוא נושה הניתן על ידי הטבע.”

“ההצדקה היחידה לקיומו של אלוהים היא שהוא אינו קיים.”

“עמים אינם חופשיים לעולם אלא במידה שאומץ לבם מתגבר על פחדם.”

“הזִקְנָה אינה אלא הימנעות משיגעון, והיעדרות של אשליות ושל תשוקות.”