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To describe happiness is to diminish it.

Stendhal

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
One of the traits of genius is not to drag its thought through the rut worn by vulgar minds.
STENDHAL

Drag Genius Mindset Thinking Vulgar
The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.
STENDHAL

Himself Interest Opinion Persuade Shepherd Try
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
A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.
STENDHAL

Carry Main Mirror Novel Road
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
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.
STENDHAL

Enjoyment Himself Idiot Imagination Life Man Sharp
Your career will be a painful one. I divine something in you which offends the vulgar.
STENDHAL

Career Divine Offend Pain Vulgur
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
The man of genius is he and he alone who finds such joy in his art that he will work at it come hell or high water.
STENDHAL

Alone Art Genius Himself Man Water
It is difficult to escape from the prevailing disease of one’s generation.
STENDHAL

Difficult Escape Generation Sick
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.
STENDHAL

Anxiety Conscious Evidence Family Heart Intimacy Life People Polite Quality
Friendship has its illusions no less than love.
STENDHAL

Friendship Illusion Love
It is from cowardice and not from want of enlightenment that we do not read in our own hearts.
STENDHAL

Coward Enlightenment Heart Ourselves Reading
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
STENDHAL

Close Himself Life Prison Thinking Worst
At a distance, we cannot conceive of the authority of a despot who knows all his subjects on sight.
STENDHAL

Authority Distance Sight Subject

To describe happiness is to diminish it.

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To describe happiness is to diminish it.

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