Quote

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

Stendhal

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Stendhal
Age: 59 †
Born: 1783
Born: January 23
Died: 1842
Died: March 23
Autobiographer
Biographer
Diarist
Novelist
Writer
Marie-Henri Beyle
Henri Beyle
True
Proper
Varnish
Self
Anxiety
Proportions
Great
Sorrow
Regain
Heart
Evidence
Dazzling
Life
Conscious
Politeness
People
Quality
Intimacy
Less
Qualities
Family
Proportion

More quotes by Stendhal

Image
A novel is like a bow, and the violin that produces the sound is the reader's soul.
Stendhal
Image
Power, after love, is the first source of happiness.
Stendhal
Image
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.
Stendhal
Image
When intimacy followed love in Italy there were no longer any vain pretensions between two lovers.
Stendhal
Image
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.
Stendhal
Image
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.
Stendhal
Image
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.
Stendhal
Image
A good book is an event in my life.
Stendhal
Image
I love her beauty, but I fear her mind.
Stendhal
Image
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.
Stendhal
Image
Logic is neither an art nor a science but a dodge.
Stendhal
Image
People happy in love have an air of intensity.
Stendhal
Image
It is with blows dealt by public contempt that a husband kills his wife in the nineteenth century it is by shutting the doors ofall the drawing-rooms in her face.
Stendhal
Image
To seem sorrowful is not in good taste: You're supposed to seem bored.
Stendhal
Image
A wise woman never yields by appointment. It should always be an unforeseen happiness.
Stendhal
Image
Women are always eagerly on the lookout for any emotion.
Stendhal
Image
A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.
Stendhal
Image
Man is not free to refuse to do the thing which gives him more pleasure than any other conceivable action.
Stendhal
Image
I no longer find such pleasure in that preeminently good society, of which I was once so fond. It seems to me that beneath a cloak of clever talk it proscribes all energy, all originality. If you are not a copy, people accuse you of being ill-mannered.
Stendhal
Image
I see but one rule: to be clear. If I am not clear, all my world crumbles to nothing.
Stendhal