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A good book is an event in my life.

Stendhal

A woman of generous character will sacrifice her life a thousand times over for her lover, but will break with him for ever over a question of pride.
STENDHAL

Break Character Generosity Life Pride Question Sacrifice Woman
Every great action is extreme when it is undertaken. Only after it has been accomplished does it seem possible to those creatures of more common stuff.
STENDHAL

Accomplishment Creature Extreme Greatness Possible
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.
STENDHAL

Cold Hungry Law Natural Need Strength Suffering
Love is like a fever which comes and goes quite independently of the will. There are no age limits for love.
STENDHAL

Age Independent Love Quite Willing
The French are the wittiest, the most charming, and up to the present, at all events, the least musical race on Earth.
STENDHAL

Charm Earth Event Present
It is the nobility of their style which will make our writers of 1840 unreadable forty years from now.
STENDHAL

Noble Past Reading Style Time Writing
People who have been made to suffer by certain things cannot be reminded of them without a horror which paralyses every other pleasure, even that to be found in reading a story.
STENDHAL

Happiness People Pleasure Reading Remind Suffering
Mathematics allows for no hypocrisy and no vagueness.
STENDHAL

Hypocrisy Mathematics Vague
Faith, I am no such fool; everyone for himself in this desert of selfishness which is called life.
STENDHAL

Desert Faith Fool Happiness Life
I see but one rule: to be clear.
STENDHAL

Clear Rule See
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.
STENDHAL

Absence Class Education Energy Family Love Necessary Struggle Survive
A novel is a mirror which passes over a highway. Sometimes it reflects to your eyes the blue of the skies, at others the churned-up mud of the road.
STENDHAL

Eyes Highway Mirror Novel Reflection Road
Prudery is a kind of avarice, the worst of all.
STENDHAL

Kind Vice Worst
I think being condemned to death is the only real distinction,” said Mathilde. “It is the only thing which cannot be bought.
STENDHAL

Bought Death Reality Thinking
At a distance, we cannot conceive of the authority of a despot who knows all his subjects on sight.
STENDHAL

Authority Distance Sight Subject
Love has always been the most important business in my life; I should say the only one.
STENDHAL

Business Important Life Love Myself Oneself

A good book is an event in my life.

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A good book is an event in my life.

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