Indeed, man has two different beings inside him. What devil thought of that malicious touch?

Julien felt himself to be strong and resolute like a man who sees clearly into his own heart.

A novel is a mirror walking along a main road.

Mathilde made an effort to use the more intimate form; she was evidently more attentive to this unusual way of speaking than to what she was saying. This use of the singular form, stripped of...

Chélan had acted as imprudently for Julien as he had for himself. He had given him the habit of reasoning correctly, and of not being put off by empty words, but he had neglected to...

I am mad, I am going under, I must follow the advice of a friend, and pay no heed to myself.

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.

To write a book is to risk being shot at in public.

The pleasures of love are always in proportion to our fears.

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...

One can acquire everything in solitude except character.

La politique au milieu des intérêts d’imagination, c’est un coup de pistolet au milieu d’un concert.

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...

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...

A good book is an event in my life.

Has he written to you?”He writes frequently.”Shew me his letters this instant, I order you’; and M. de Renal added six feet to his stature.

After moral poisoning, one requires physical remedies and a bottle of champagne.

The first qualification for a historian is to have no ability to invent.

Mathilde returned and strolled past the drawing-room windows; she saw him busily engaged in describing to Madame de Fervaques the old ruined castles that crown the steep banks of the Rhine and give them so...

In Paris, Julien’s position with regard to Madame de Renal would very soon have been simplified; but in Paris love is the child of the novels. The young tutor and his timid mistress would have...

Certaines choses que Napoléon dit des femmes, plusieurs discussiions sur le mérite des romans à la mode sous son règne lui donnèrent alors, pour la première fois, quelques idées que tout autre jeune home de...

I think being condemned to death is the only real distinction,” said Mathilde. “It is the only thing which cannot be bought.

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...

Presque tous les malheurs de la vie viennent des fausses idées que nous avons sur ce qui nous arrive. Connaître à fond les hommes, juger sainement des événements, est donc un grand pas vers le...

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...

There are as many styles of beauty as there are visions of happiness.

I will never demean myself to speak about my courage,” said Julien, coldly, “it would be mean to do so. Let the world judge by the facts.

Monfleury est en vente, je perds cinquante mille francs, s’il le faut, mais je suis tout joyeux, je quitte cet enfer d’hypocrisie et de tracasseries. Je vais chercher la solitude et la paix champêtre au...

God’s only excuse is that he does not exist

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...

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 very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love