On Love

Under this title, which I would willingly have made still more modest, I have brought together, without excessive severity, a selection made from three or four hundred playing c...

The comic presupposes "go" in the public, and _brio_ in the actor. The delicious foolery of Palomba, played at Naples by Casaccia, is an impossibility at Paris. There we have th...

_Note:_ All the footnotes to the Translation, except those within square brackets, which are the work of the Translators, are by Stendhal himself. The Translators' notes at the...

Among young people, when they have done with mocking at some poor lover, and he has left the room, the conversation generally ends by discussing the question, whether it is bett...

The likelihood of constancy when desire is satisfied can only be foretold from the constancy displayed, in spite of cruel doubts and jealousy and ridicule, in the days before in...

"But women are charged with the petty labours of the household." The Colonel of my regiment, M. S----, has four daughters, brought up on the best principles, which means that th...

'Tis beneath the dusky tent of the Bedouin Arab that we seek the model and the home of true love. There, as elsewhere, solitude and a fine climate have kindled the noblest passi...

"Halberstadt, _June 23rd_, 1807.... Nevertheless, M. de Bülow is absolutely and openly in love with Mademoiselle de Feltheim; he follows her about everywhere, always, talks to h...

Driven to despair by the misfortune to which love has reduced me, I curse existence. I have no heart for anything. The weather is dull; it is raining, and a late spell of cold h...

In Madagascar, a woman exposes without a thought what is here most carefully hidden, but would die of shame sooner than show her arm. Clearly three-quarters of modesty come from...

All their lives women hear mention made by men of things claiming importance--large profits, success in war, people killed in duels, fiendish or admirable revenges, and so on. T...

I am going to translate an anecdote from the Provençal manuscripts. The facts, of which you are going to read, happened about the year 1180 and the history was written about 125...

Pique is a manifestation of vanity; I do not want my antagonist to go higher than myself and _I take that antagonist himself as judge of my worth_. I want to produce an effect o...

This evening, in a box at the theatre, I met a man who had some favour to ask of a magistrate, aged fifty. His first question was: "Who is his mistress? _Chi avvicina adesso?_"...

I advise the majority of people born in the North to skip the present chapter. It is an obscure dissertation upon certain phenomena relative to the orange-tree, a plant which do...

Mortimer returned from a long voyage in fear and trembling; he adored Jenny, but Jenny had not answered his letters. On his arrival in London, he mounts his horse and goes off t...

Love took a singular form in Provence, from the year 1100 up to 1328. It had an established legislation for the relations of the two sexes in love, as severe and as exactly foll...

If the Italian, always agitated between love and hate, is a creature of passion, and the Frenchman of vanity, the good and simple descendants of the ancient Germans are assuredl...

When you are in love, as each new object strikes your eye or your memory, whether crushed in a gallery and patiently listening to a parliamentary debate, or galloping to the rel...

In France all our ideas about women are got from a twopence-halfpenny catechism. The delightful part of it is that many people, who would not allow the authority of this book to...

If one of the lovers is too superior in advantages which both value, the love of the other must die; for sooner or later comes the fear of contempt, to cut short crystallisation.

In the actual education of girls, which is the fruit of chance and the most idiotic pride, we allow their most shining faculties, and those most fertile in happiness for themsel...

I love England too much and I have seen of her too little to be able to speak on the subject. I shall make use of the observations of a friend.

I mean to put aside my natural affections and be only a cold philosopher. French women, fashioned by their amiable men, themselves creatures only of vanity and physical desires,...

I have lived a good deal of late with the ballet-girls of the Teatro Del Sol, at Valencia. People assure me that many of them are very chaste; the reason being that their profes...

We study her perfections: this is the moment at which a woman should yield to realise the greatest possible physical pleasure. In the case even of the most reserved women, their...

I beg leave to speak ill of France a little longer. The reader need have no fear of seeing my satire remain unpunished; if this essay finds readers, I shall pay for my insults w...

I tell thee, proud Templar, that not in thy fiercest battles hast thou displayed more of thy vaunted courage than has been shewn by women, when called upon to suffer by affectio...

There is no form of insolence so swiftly punished as that which leads you, in passion-love, to take an intimate friend into your confidence. He knows that, if what you say is tr...

So ridiculous an expression ought to be changed, yet the thing exists. I have seen the amiable and noble Wilhelmina, the despair of the beaux of Berlin, making light of love and...

Italy's good fortune is that it has been left to the inspiration of the moment, a good fortune which it shares, up to a certain point, with Germany and England.

A woman of quick fancy and tender heart, but timid and cautious in her sensibility, who the day after she appears in society, passes in review a thousand times nervously and pai...

A girl of eighteen has not enough crystallisation in her power, forms desires too limited by her narrow experiences of the things of life, to be in a position to love with as mu...

In the course of events hope may fail--love is none the less born. With a firm, daring and impetuous character, and in an imagination developed by the troubles of life, the degr...

Imaginative souls are sensitive and also mistrustful, even the most ingenuous,[1]--I maintain. They may be suspicious without knowing it: they have had so many disappointments i...

2. Gallant love--that which ruled in Paris towards 1760, to be found in the memoirs and novels of the period, in Crébillon, Lauzun, Duclos, Marmontel, Chamfort, Mme. d'Épinay, e...

She leaves you, because she is too sure of you. You have killed fear, and there is nothing left to give birth to the little doubts of happy love. Just make her uneasy, and, abov...

The following point, which will be disputed, I offer only to those--shall I say unhappy enough?--to have loved with passion during long years, and loved in the face of invincibl...

In proof of crystallisation I shall content myself with recalling the following anecdote. A young woman hears that Edward, her relation, who is to return from the Army, is a you...

The leap of Leucas was a fine image of antiquity. It is true, the remedy of love is almost impossible. A danger is needed to call man's attention back sharply to look to his own...

Only at Rome[1] can a respectable woman, seated in her carriage, say effusively to another woman, a mere acquaintance, what I heard this morning: "Ah, my dear, beware of love wi...

If the influence of temperament makes itself felt in ambition, avarice, friendship, etc. etc., what must it be in the case of love, in which the physical also is perforce an ing...

A free government is a government which does no harm to its citizens, but which, on the contrary, gives them security and tranquillity. But 'tis a long cry from this to happines...

In love there is no such thing as ingratitude; the actual pleasure always repays, and more than repays, sacrifices that seem the greatest. In love no other crime but want of hon...

As for women's jealousy--they are suspicious, they have infinitely more at stake than we, they have made a greater sacrifice to love, have far fewer means of distraction and, ab...

To see the subtlety and sureness of judgment with which women grasp certain details, I am lost in admiration: but a moment later, I see them praise a blockhead to the skies, let...

Crystallisation scarcely ceases at all during love. This is its history: so long as all is well between the lover and the loved, there is crystallisation by imaginary solution;...

In a _salon_ lit by thousands of candles a fast valse throws a fever upon young hearts, eclipses timidity, swells the consciousness of power--in fact, gives them the daring to l...

Women attach themselves by the favours they dispense. As nineteen-twentieths of their ordinary dreams are relative to love, after intimate intercourse these day-dreams group the...

In France they have attempted to obtain it by public opinion--the one dyke capable of resistance, yet it has been badly built. It is absurd to tell a young girl: "You must be fa...

It is because each new beauty gives the full and entire satisfaction of a desire. You wish your mistress gentle--she is gentle; and then you wish her proud like Emilie in Cornei...

Andalusia is one of the most charming sojourns that Pleasure has chosen for itself on earth. I had three or four anecdotes to show how my ideas about the three or four different...

An analogy is to be seen at the theatre in the reception of the public's favourite actors: the spectators are no longer conscious of the beauty or ugliness which the actors have...

This evening I have just found out that music, when it is perfect, puts the heart into the same state as it enjoys in the presence of the loved one--that is to say, it gives see...

St. Simon Stylites, who sits twenty-two years on the top of a column beating himself with a strap, is in my eyes, I confess, not at all virtuous; and it is this that gives this...

Alberic meets in a box at the theatre a woman more beautiful than his mistress (I beg to be allowed here a mathematical valuation)--that is to say, her features promise three un...

Suddenly in the midst of the most violent and the most thwarted passion come moments, when a man believes that he is in love no longer--as it were a spring of fresh water in the...

The pleasures of all individuals are different and often opposed to one another; which explains very well how that, which is beauty for one individual, is ugliness for another....

Women with their feminine pride visit the iniquities of the fools upon the men of sense, and those of the prosaic, prosperous and brutal upon the noble-minded. A very pretty res...

The most fastidious spirits are very given to curiosity and prepossession: this is to be seen, especially, in beings in which that sacred fire, the source of the passions, is ex...

In a soul completely detached--a girl living in a lonely castle in the depth of the country--the slightest astonishment may bring on a slight admiration, and, if the faintest ho...

I. Of Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 II. Of the Birth of Love. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 III. Of Hope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....

Love is like the fever(5), it is born and spends itself without the slightest intervention of the will. That is one of the principal differences between gallant-love and passion...

Perhaps men who are not susceptible to the feelings of passion-love are those most keenly sensitive to the effects of beauty: that at least is the strongest impression which suc...

XL. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 XLI. Of Nations with regard to Love--France. . . . . . . . . . 158 XLII. France (_continued_). . . . . . . . ....

This reminds me of Count G----, the Mirabeau of Rome. The delightful little government of that land has taught him an original way of telling stories by a broken string of words...

Always a little doubt to allay--that is what whets our appetite every moment, that is what makes the life of happy love. As it is never separated from fear, so its pleasures can...

I make every possible effort to be dry. I would impose silence upon my heart, which feels that it, has much to say. When I think that I have noted a truth, I always tremble lest...