The Red and the Black Quotes

“A good book is an event in my life.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“A novel is a mirror walking along a main road.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“Our true passions are selfish.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“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.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“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 succeeded.
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.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“After moral poisoning, one requires physical remedies and a bottle of champagne.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“Faith, I am no such fool; everyone for himself in this desert of selfishness which is called life.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“The idea which tyrants find most useful is the idea of God.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“Ah, Sir, a novel is a mirror carried along a high road. At one moment it reflects to your vision the azure skies, at another the mire of the puddles at your feet. And the man who carries this mirror in his pack will be accused by you of being immoral! His mirror shews the mire, and you blame the mirror! Rather blame that high road upon which the puddle lies, still more the inspector of roads who allows the water to gather and the puddle to form.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“Indeed, man has two different beings inside him. What devil thought of that malicious touch?”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“Each man for himself in that desert of egoism which is called life.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“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.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“The tyranny of public opinion (and what an opinion!) is as fatuous in the small towns of France as it is in the United States of America.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“An English traveller relates how he lived upon intimate terms with a tiger; he had reared it and used to play with it, but always kept a loaded pistol on the table.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“But, if I sample this pleasure so prudently and circumspectly, it will no longer be a pleasure.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“What is the use of a love that makes one yawn? One might as well take to religion.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“I am mad, I am going under, I must follow the advice of a friend, and pay no heed to myself.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“Your career will be a painful one. I divine something in you which offends the vulgar.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“Prestige! Sir, is it nothing? To be revered by fools, gaped at by children, envied by the rich and scorned by the wise.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“I think being condemned to death is the only real distinction," said Mathilde. "It is the only thing which cannot be bought.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“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?”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“...one of the traits of genius is not to drag its thought through the rut worn by vulgar minds.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“Misery destroys judgment.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“C'est la violente impression du laid sur une âme faite pour aimer ce qui est beau. ”
― Stendhal, Le Rouge et le Noir

“Ce iubire mai e aceea care te face sa casti?”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“The footman burst in, announcing, 'Monsieur le Duc de ---.'
'Hold your tongue, you fool,' said the Duke as he entered the room. He said this so well, and with such majesty than Julien could not help thinking that knowing how to lose his temper with a footman was the whole extent of this great personage's knowledge.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“Un des moments les plus pénibles de sa vie était celui où, chaque matin, en s'éveillant, il s'apprenait son malheur.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“Exalted by a sentiment of which she was proud, and that overcame all her arrogance, she was reluctant to let a moment of her life go by without occupying it with some remarkable deed.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“O musculiță efemeră se naște la nouă dimineață, în lungile zile de vară, ca să moară la cinci seara; cum ar putea ea înțelege cuvântul noapte? Mai dă-i cinci ore de viață, și ea va vedea și va înțelege ce e noaptea.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“They were completely vague. They expressed everything and nothing. 'It is the Æolian harp of style,' thought Julien. 'Amid the most lofty thoughts about annihilation, death, the infinite, etc., I can see no reality save a shocking fear of ridicule.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black