Henri B. Stendhal

Beauty is the promise of happiness.

— Henri B. Stendhal

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.

— Henri B. Stendhal

Nothing is so hideous as an obsolete fashion.

— Henri B. Stendhal

To describe happiness is to diminish it.

— Henri B. Stendhal

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

— Henri B. Stendhal

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.

— Henri B. Stendhal

In love, unlike most other passions, the recollection of what you have had and lost is always better than what you can hope for in the future.

— Henri B. Stendhal

Since I am a man, my heart is three or four times less sensitive, because I have three or four times as much power of reason and experience of the world -- a thing which you women call hard-heartedness. As a man, I can take refuge in having mistresses. The more of them I have, and the greater the scandal, the more I acquire reputation and brilliance in society.

— Henri B. Stendhal

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.

— Henri B. Stendhal

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.

— Henri B. Stendhal

A wise woman never yields by appointment. It should always be an unforeseen happiness.

— Henri B. Stendhal

One can acquire everything in solitude except character.

— Henri B. Stendhal