Character: Henri Beyle. Page 1

Why not believe that we receive from our mothers some uncertainty about the authenticity of paternity; if the mother does not raise any doubts, then this is only because nature has furnished motherhood with serious physical evidence.

I know only too well that if a person takes up a pen, he must prepare himself for the fact that he will be scolded by a canal.

If Shakespeare is farther away in time, then in inner sense he is much closer to our days.

I never regretted anything.

My exact scientific description of the special kind of madness called love cannot succeed in France. This madness is becoming less and less common in our country.

Returning after seven years of wandering, I see that in France it is impossible to achieve success without humiliating myself and currying favor with the newspapers.

White, red, black - all these are expressive emblems of changing times.

In addition to the artist, reality itself has the ability to awaken subtle and complex sensations of beauty. But the artist himself is a part of reality. And therefore, the activity of the imagination, pouring out in the form of creativity, is the birth of a new reality, is the art of changing the world.

The human imagination does not die. Just as feeling becomes refined, imagination also becomes finer and sharper in human beings.

Laughter of happiness, born in his heart from the day he saw her, soon began to play on her lips.

Romantics and classics are two banks of the river of public surprise. The classics are right-bank people of yesterday's tastes, artists of yesterday's celebration of life. I myself am a romantic - a pioneer who boldly moored to the left bank.

When one of the participants in the conversation wanted to dispute Byron's words, he suddenly made it clear that he was an English lord and therefore did not

Don't let anyone guess or be able to read my mind.

With a stupid monarch, smart ministers do not hold out.