The ordinary procedure of the nineteenth century is that when a powerful and noble personage encounters a man of feeling, he kills, exiles, imprisons or so humiliates him that the other, like a fool, dies of grief.
STENDHALTo describe happiness is to diminish it.
More Stendhal Quotes
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What is really beautiful must always be true.
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There are as many styles of beauty as there are visions of happiness.
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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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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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The difference breeds hatred.
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Every true passion thinks only of itself.
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Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it.
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I call “crystallization” that action of the mind that discovers fresh perfections in its beloved at every turn of events.
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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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The sight of anything extremely beautiful, in nature or in art, brings back the memory of what one loves, with the speed of lightning.
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Politics in a literary work, is like a gun shot in the middle of a concert, something vulgar, and however, something which is impossible to ignore.
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A novel is like a bow, and the violin that produces the sound is the reader’s soul.
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Because one has little fear of shocking vanity in Italy, people adopt an intimate tone very quickly and discuss personal things.
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Napoleon was indeed the man sent by God to help the youth of France! Who is to take his place?
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Man is not free to refuse to do the thing which gives him more pleasure than any other conceivable action.
STENDHAL