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.
STENDHALTo 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.
More Stendhal Quotes
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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.
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Indeed, man has two different beings inside him. What devil thought of that malicious touch?
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A very small matter, when all is said; only a fool would be concerned about it.
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Every true passion thinks only of itself.
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Your career will be a painful one. I divine something in you which offends the vulgar.
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Mathematics allows for no hypocrisy and no vagueness.
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A man who is half an idiot, but who keeps a sharp lookout and acts prudently all his life, often enjoys the pleasure of triumphing over men of more imagination than he.
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When you want to court a woman, court her sister first
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In our calling, we have to choose; we must make our fortune either in this world or in the next, there is no middle way.
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A good book is an event in my life.
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I think no woman I have had ever gave me so sweet a moment, or at so light a price, as the moment I owe to a newly heard musical phrase.
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True 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.
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People are less self-conscious in the intimacy of family life and during the anxiety of a great sorrow. The dazzling varnish of an extreme politeness is then less in evidence, and the true qualities of the heart regain their proper proportions.
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I am mad, I am going under, I must follow the advice of a friend, and pay no heed to myself.
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Life is very short, and it ought not to be spent crawling at the feet of miserable scoundrels.
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