Best quotes from The Red and the Black

Things that to him seemed admirable were precisely those censured by the people around him. His silent response was always: “What monsters, what fools!” He was glad, and proud, that often he understood nothing they were talking about.

- Narrator

Exalted by a sentiment of which she was proud, and that overcame all her arrogance, she was reluctant to let a moment of her life go by without occupying it with some remarkable deed.

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 itself reared only upon a structure of thought.

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

What is the use of a love that makes one yawn? One might as well take to religion

A novel is a mirror walking along a main road.

There’s already grandeur, and true audacity, in daring to love somebody so far beneath me in social standing

- Mathilde

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

- Mathilde