Quotessence
Home / Topics / Stendhal Quotes

Stendhal Quotes

Browse 20 quotes about Stendhal.

Stendhal Quotes

“Stendhal knows the source of his greatest happiness and his worst misery: the reflexivity of his spiritual life. When he loves, enjoys beauty, feels free and unconstrained, he realizes not only the bliss of these feelings but, at the same time, the happiness of being aware of this happiness. But now that he ought to be completely absorbed by his happiness and feel redeemed from all his limitations and inadequacies, he is still full of problems and doubts: Is that the whole story?—he asks himself. Is that what they call love? Is it possible to love, to feel, to be delighted and yet to observe oneself so coolly and so calmly? Stendhal’s answer is by no means the usual one, which assumes the existence of an insurmountable gulf between feeling and reason, passion and reflexion, love and ambition, but is based on the assumption that modern man simply feels differently, is enraptured and enthusiastic differently from a contemporary of Racine or Rousseau. For them, spontaneity and reflexivity of the emotions were incompatible, for Stendhal and his heroes they are quite inseparable; none of their passions is so strong as the desire to be constantly calling themselves to account for what is going on inside them. Compared with the older literature, this self consciousness implies just as profound a change as Stendhal’s realism, and the overcoming of classical-romantic psychology is just as strictly one of the preconditions of his art as the abolition of the alternative between the romantic escape from the world and the anti-romantic belief in the world.”

EmotionReflectionFeelingStendhal
Book:The Social History of Art: Volume 4: Naturalism, Impressionism, The Film Age
Create image

“The main thing is not to be deceived, that is, to lie and and simulate better than the others. All Stendhal's great novels revolve around the problem of hypocrisy, around the secret of how to deal with men and how to rule the world; they are all in the nature of text-book of political realism and courses of instruction in political amoralism. In his critique of Stendhal, Balzac already remarks that Chartreuse de Parme is a new Principe, which Machiavelli himself, if he had lived as an emigre in the Italy of nineteenth century, would not have been able to write any differently. Julien Sorel's Machiavellian motto, "Qui veut les fins veut les moyens," here acquires its classical formulation, as used repeatedly by Balzac himself, namely that one must accept the rules of the world's game, if one wants to count in the world and to take part in the play.”

Nineteenth CenturyBalzacStendhalMachiavellianismJulien SorelPolitical Realism
Book:The Social History of Art: Volume 4: Naturalism, Impressionism, The Film Age
Create image

“The difference between Marilyn’s and Jayne’s approach to intellectual pursuits is that Marilyn carried big heavy books around and hung out with brainy people to absorb their intellect, while Jayne really had a thirst for knowledge. Jayne was very proud of the fact that if she like something enough she would commit it to memory. At that time, The Satanic Bible was still in monograph form, and Jayne had pored over those pages until she knew most of it by heart...Marilyn gave me a copy of Stendhal’s On Love, and I still have a copy of Walter Benton’s This is My Beloved, which we bought together on Sunset Boulevard. Marilyn turned me on to it—wanted me to read it and write something in it for her. I got as far as writing her name in it, but I ended up with the book. It meant a lot to me during a particularly dark period in my life after I left L.A. Jayne kept insisting I read The Story of O and I, Jan Cremer. She gave me a dog-eared copy of each. It seems a distinctly feminine trait to want to share books with people they care deeply about.”

ReadingSatanismMarilyn MonroeStendhalOn LoveThe Satanic BibleAnne DesclosJan CremerJayne MansfieldPauline RéageThe Story Of OThis Is My BelovedWalter Benton
Book:The Secret Life of a Satanist: The Authorized Biography of Anton LaVey
Create image

“Tahtın üzerine ya da yakınına doğan zeki insanlar, kısa sürede incelikli düşünme yetilerini yitirirler; çevrelerinde, kabalık olarak gördükleri konuşma özgürlüğünü yasaklarlar; yalnızca birtakım maskeler görmek isterler ve insanları tenlerinin güzelliğine bakarak yargılamaya kalkarlar; işin hoş yanı, sezgilerinin çok ince olduğuna inanmalarıdır.”

StendhalParma Manastırı
Book:The Charterhouse of Parma
Create image

“So often have I studied the views of Florence, that I was familiar with the city before I ever set foot within its walls; I found that I could thread my way through the streets without a guide. Turning to the left I passed before a bookseller's shop, where I bought a couple of descriptive surveys of the city (guide). Twice only was I forced to inquire my way of passers by, who answered me with politeness which was wholly French and with a most singular accent; and at last I found myself before the facade of Santa Croce. Within, upon the right of the doorway, rises the tomb of Michelangelo; lo! There stands Canova's effigy of Alfieri; I needed no cicerone to recognise the features of the great Italian writer. Further still, I discovered the tomb of Machiavelli; while facing Michelangelo lies Galileo. What a race of men! And to these already named, Tuscany might further add Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch. What a fantastic gathering! The tide of emotion which overwhelmed me flowed so deep that it scarce was to be distinguished from religious awe. The mystic dimness which filled the church, its plain, timbered roof, its unfinished facade – all these things spoke volumes to my soul. Ah! Could I but forget...! A Friar moved silently towards me; and I, in the place of that sense of revulsion all but bordering on physical horror which usually possesses me in such circumstances, discovered in my heart a feeling which was almost friendship. Was not he likewise a Friar, Fra Bartolomeo di San Marco, that great painter who invented the art of chiaroscuro, and showed it to Raphael, and was the forefather of Correggio? I spoke to my tonsured acquaintance, and found in him an exquisite degree of politeness. Indeed, he was delighted to meet a Frenchman. I begged him to unlock for me the chapel in the north-east corner of the church, where are preserved the frescoes of Volterrano. He introduced me to the place, then left me to my own devices. There, seated upon the step of a folds tool, with my head thrown back to rest upon the desk, so that I might let my gaze dwell on the ceiling, I underwent, through the medium of Volterrano's Sybills, the profoundest experience of ecstasy that, as far as I am aware, I ever encountered through the painter's art. My soul, affected by the very notion of being in Florence, and by proximity of those great men whose tombs I had just beheld, was already in a state of trance. Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty, I could perceive its very essence close at hand; I could, as it were, feel the stuff of it beneath my fingertips. I had attained to that supreme degree of sensibility where the divine intimations of art merge with the impassioned sensuality of emotion. As I emerged from the porch of Santa Croce, I was seized with a fierce palpitations of the heart (that same symptom which, in Berlin, is referred to as an attack of nerves); the well-spring of life was dried up within me, and I walked in constant fear of falling to the ground. I sat down on one of the benches which line the piazza di Santa Croce; in my wallet, I discovered the following lines by Ugo Foscolo, which I re-read now with a great surge of pleasure; I could find no fault with such poetry; I desperately needed to hear the voice of a friend who shared my own emotion (…)”

FlorenceStendhalFirencaStendal
Book:Rome, Naples et Florence
Create image

“Stendhal, desde infância, amou as mulheres sensualmente; projetou nelas as aspirações de sua adolescência; imaginava-se de bom grado salvando de algum perigo uma bela desconhecida e conquistando-lhe o amor. Chegando a Paris, o que desejava mais ardentemente era "uma mulher encantadora; nós nos adoraremos, ela conhecerá minha alma"... Velho, escreve na poeira as iniciais das mulheres que mais amou. "Creio que foi o devaneio que preferi a tudo", confia-nos ele. E são imagens de mulheres que lhe alimentaram os sonhos; a lembrança delas anima as paisagens. "A linha de rochedos aproximando-se de Arbois, creio, e vindo de Dôle pela estrada principal, foi para mim uma imagem sensível e evidente da alma de Métilde." A música, a pintura, a arquitetura, tudo o que amou, amou-o com uma alma de amante infeliz; quando passeia em Roma, a cada página, uma mulher aparece; nas saudades, nos desejos, nas tristezas, nas alegrias que elas suscitaram-lhe, conheceu o gosto do próprio coração; a elas é que deseja como juizes. Freqüenta-lhes os salões, procura mostrar-se brilhante aos seus olhos, deveu-lhes suas maiores felicidades, suas penas; foram sua principal ocupação. Prefere seu amor a toda amizade e sua amizade à dos homens; mulheres inspiram seus livros, figuras de mulheres os povoam; é em grande parte para elas que escreve. "Corro o risco de ser lido em 1900 pelas almas que amo, as Mme Roland, as Mélanie Guibert..." As mulheres foram a própria subsistência de sua vida. De onde lhe veio esse privilégio? Esse terno amigo das mulheres, e precisamente porque as ama em sua verdade, não crê no mistério feminino; nenhuma essência define de uma vez por todas a mulher; a idéia de um "eterno feminino" parece-lhe pedante e ridículo. "Pedantes repetem há dois mil anos que as mulheres têm o espírito mais vivo e os homens, mais solidez; que as mulheres têm mais delicadeza nas idéias e os homens, maior capacidade de atenção. Um basbaque de Paris que passeava outrora pelos jardins de Versalhes concluía, do que via, que as árvores nascem podadas." As diferenças que se observam entre os homens e as mulheres refletem as de sua situação. Por exemplo, por que não seriam as mulheres mais romanescas do que seus amantes? "Uma mulher com seu bastidor de bordar, trabalho insípido que só ocupa as mãos, pensa no amante, enquanto este galopando no campo com seu esquadrão é preso se faz um movimento em falso." Acusam igualmente as mulheres de carecerem de bom senso. "As mulheres preferem as emoções à razão; é muito simples: como em virtude de nossos costumes vulgares elas não são encarregadas de nenhum negócio na família, a razão nunca lhes ê útil.. . Encarregai vossa mulher de tratar de vossos interesses com os arrendatários de duas de vossas propriedades; aposto que as contas serão mais bem feitas do que por vós." Se a História revela-nos tão pequeno número de gênios femininos é porque a sociedade as priva de quaisquer meios de expressão: "Todos os gênios que nascem mulheres estão perdidos para a felicidade do público; desde que o acaso lhes dê os meios de se revelarem, vós as vereís desenvolver os mais difíceis talentos." O pior handicap que devem suportar é a educação com que as embrutecem; o opressor esforça-se sempre por diminuir os que oprime; é propositadamente que o homem recusa às mulheres quaisquer possibilidades. "Deixemos ociosas nelas as qualidades mais brilhantes e mais ricas de felicidade para elas mesmas e para nós." Aos dez anos, a menina é mais fina e viva do que seu irmão; com vinte, o moleque é homem de espírito e a moça "uma grande idiota desajeitada, tímida e com medo de urna aranha"; o erro está na formação que teve. Fora necessário dar à mulher exatamente a mesma instrução que se dá aos rapazes.”

FeminismoStendhal
Book:The Second Sex
Create image

“I went into the dining-room, where four covered pots of soup stood on the table, and moved over to the bookshelves to the left of the fireplace. Here I kept two or three dozen works on architecture and sculpture, and a hundred or so plain texts of the standard English and French poets, stopping chronologically well short of our own day: Mallarmé and Lord de Tabley are my most modern versifiers. I have no novelists, finding theirs a puny and piffling art, one that, even at its best, can render truthfully no more than a few minor parts of the total world it pretends to take as its field of reference. A man has only to feel some emotion, any emotion, anything differentiated at all, and spend a minute speculating how this would be rendered in a novel—not just the average novel, but the work of a Stendhal or a Proust—to grasp the pitiful inadequacy of all prose fiction to the task it sets itself. By comparison, the humblest productions of the visual arts are triumphs of portrayal, both of the matter and of the spirit, while verse—lyric verse, at least—is equidistant from fiction and life, and is autonomous.”

NovelsLiterature QuotesProustPoetry QuoteStendhal
Book:The Green Man
Create image

“Come into my world. I will show you the phenomenon that Stendhal experienced. I will help you feel the cascading arpeggios of Wagner's overture. I will dance to Doga’s waltzes with you. A day spent without appreciating the beauty surrounding us is a waste. Let me appreciate you”

WorldLoveInspirationalInspirationTogetherLove QuotesBeautyTeachRelationshipAdventurePoemWasteAppreciateExperienceDatingHarmonyQuoteDanceUnityGirlfriendCrushPhenomenonHelpLearnLoverLovingDayBoyfriendKamandKojouriFeelKamand KojouriNewLove PoemsTryUnionLovedShowWagnerComeWaltzFlirtYou And MeCourtingYou And IMe And YouPhenomenaStendhalIntroduceOvertureArpeggioCascadingDoga
Author:Kamand Kojouri
Create image