One can acquire everything in solitude except character.
StendhalRead
It is the nobility of their style which will make our writers of 1840 unreadable forty years from now.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Writing styles can become outdated, and what is considered noble or elegant can lead to future unreadability.
Stendhal's quote highlights the inevitability of change in literary style, asserting that what is highly regarded in one era may not resonate with future generations. It reflects the idea that the grandeur of a writer's style may contribute to their works becoming inaccessible, as evolving tastes and cultural shifts redefine what is deemed readable or valuable in literature over time.
Themes
LiteratureWritingStyleNobilityChange
In practice
Example use cases
In a literary seminar discussing how styles have shifted over decades.
More from Stendhal
All quotes βTrue 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.
StendhalRead
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.
StendhalRead
A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love.
StendhalRead
If you don't love me, it does not matter, anyway I can love for both of us.
StendhalRead
Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it.
StendhalRead
Similar quotes
All novels are fantasies. Some are more honest about it.
Gene WolfeRead
There are now 30-year-old Mexican writers who do great novels in which Mexico isn't even mentioned.
Carlos FuentesRead
We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.
Franz KafkaRead
In a word, literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book-friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness. The things I have learned and the things I have been taught seem of ridiculously little importance compared with their "large loves and heavenly charities.
Helen KellerRead
She doesn't do the things heroines are supposed to. Which is rather Jane Austen's point - Fanny is her subversive heroine. She is gentle and self-doubting and utterly feminine; and given the right circumstances, she would defy an army.
Susanna ClarkeRead
You want in all cases for the story to get through the writing.
Alice MunroRead