Stendhal

Love has always been the most important business in my life, I should say the only one.

Life is too short, and the time we waste in yawning never can be regained.

Far less envy in America than in France, and far less wit.

Power, after love, is the first source of happiness.

The man of genius is he and he alone who finds such joy in his art that he will work at it come hell or high water.

People who have been made to suffer by certain things cannot be reminded of them without a horror which paralyses every other pleasure, even that to be found in reading a story.

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

Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it.

To describe happiness is to diminish it.

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.

Friendship has its illusions no less than love.

What is really beautiful must always be true.