Quote

Signs cannot be represented, in a spy's report, so damningly as words.

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
Report
Signs
Reports
Words
Language
Cannot
Spy
Represented

More quotes by Stendhal

Image
It is not enough for a landscape to be interesting in itself. Eventually there must be a moral and historic interest.
Stendhal
Image
I have a bad memory for facts.
Stendhal
Image
...one of the traits of genius is not to drag its thought through the rut worn by vulgar minds.
Stendhal
Image
A wise woman never yields by appointment. It should always be an unforeseen happiness.
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
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.
Stendhal
Image
A good book is an event in my life.
Stendhal
Image
When a man leaves his mistress, he runs the risk of being betrayed two or three times daily.
Stendhal
Image
The English are, I think the most obtuse and barbarous people in the world
Stendhal
Image
The Russians imitate French ways, but always at a distance of fifty years.
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
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 boredom of married life inevitable destroys love, when love has preceded marriage.
Stendhal
Image
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.
Stendhal
Image
People happy in love have an air of intensity.
Stendhal
Image
Almost all our misfortunes in life come from the wrong notions we have about the things that happen to us.
Stendhal
Image
Women are always eagerly on the lookout for any emotion.
Stendhal
Image
I see but one rule: to be clear. If I am not clear, all my world crumbles to nothing.
Stendhal
Image
I used to think of deathlike I suppose soldiers think of it: it was a possible thing that I could well avoid by my skill.
Stendhal