God’s only excuse is that he does not exist.
STENDHALIn our calling, we have to choose; we must make our fortune either in this world or in the next, there is no middle way.
More Stendhal Quotes
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Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it.
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One-half, the finest half, of life is hidden from the man who does not love with passion.
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Man is not free to refuse to do the thing which gives him more pleasure than any other conceivable action.
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Logic is neither an art nor a science but a dodge.
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Women are always eagerly on the lookout for any emotion.
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To describe happiness is to diminish it.
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All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.
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It is with blows dealt by public contempt that a husband kills his wife in the nineteenth century; it is by shutting the doors ofall the drawing-rooms in her face.
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After moral poisoning, one requires physical remedies and a bottle of champagne.
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Who knows whether it is not true that phosphorus and mind are not the same thing?
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A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love.
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Signs cannot be represented, in a spy’s report, so damningly as words.
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The idea which tyrants find most useful is the idea of God.
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The tyranny of public opinion (and what an opinion!) is as fatuous in the small towns of France as it is in the United States of America.
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I have a bad memory for facts.
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To find love in Paris you must go down among those classes where the absence of education and of vanity, and the struggle for bare necessities, have allowed more energy to survive.
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One can acquire everything in solitude except character.
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I think being condemned to death is the only real distinction,” said Mathilde. “It is the only thing which cannot be bought.
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There is no such thing as “natural law”: this expression is nothing but old nonsense… Prior to laws, what is natural is only the strength of the lion, or the need of the creature suffering from hunger or cold, in short, need.
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I love her beauty, but I fear her mind.
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Women prefer emotions to reasoning.
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Spring appears and we are once more children.
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The boredom of married life inevitable destroys love, when love has preceded marriage.
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The French are the wittiest, the most charming, and up to the present, at all events, the least musical race on Earth.
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Why not make an end of it all? My life is a succession of griefs and bitter feelings. What is death? A very small matter, when all is said; only a fool would be concerned about it.
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Any man who talks about his love affairs thereby proves he is ignorant of love and is moved only by vanity.
STENDHAL