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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.

Stendhal

The difference breeds hatred.
STENDHAL

Breed Difference Hate One Liner
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
After moral poisoning, one requires physical remedies and a bottle of champagne.
STENDHAL

Alcohol Bottle Champagne Moral Physical Poison
The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.
STENDHAL

Himself Interest Opinion Persuade Shepherd Try
Indeed, man has two different beings inside him. What devil thought of that malicious touch?
STENDHAL

Devil Different Man Touch
To describe happiness is to diminish it.
STENDHAL

Description Diminish Happiness
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.
STENDHAL

Comparison Death Love Pay Standard Thinking True
Beauty is nothing but a promise of happiness.
STENDHAL

Beautiful Happiness Promise
Who knows whether it is not true that phosphorus and mind are not the same thing?
STENDHAL

Different Known Mindset True
I see but one rule: to be clear. If I am not clear, all my world crumbles to nothing.
STENDHAL

Crumble Myself Rule See World
At a distance, we cannot conceive of the authority of a despot who knows all his subjects on sight.
STENDHAL

Authority Distance Sight Subject
A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.
STENDHAL

Carry Main Mirror Novel Road
Women are always eagerly on the lookout for any emotion.
STENDHAL

Emotion Search Woman
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.
STENDHAL

End Feeling Fools Grief Life Myself Success
The Russians imitate French ways, but always at a distance of fifty years.
STENDHAL

Distance Imitation Time
War was then no longer this noble and unified outburst of souls in love with glory that he had imagined from Napoleon’s proclamations.
STENDHAL

Glory Himself Imagination Noble War
I call “crystallization” that action of the mind that discovers fresh perfections in its beloved at every turn of events.
STENDHAL

Action Crystal Discover Event Mindset
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
All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.
STENDHAL

Clever Fear Foundation Religion Smart
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.
STENDHAL

Death Fools Grief Man Ordinary Personage Powerful Procedure
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
Your career will be a painful one. I divine something in you which offends the vulgar.
STENDHAL

Career Divine Offend Pain Vulgur
A forty-year-old woman is only something to men who have loved her in her youth.
STENDHAL

Herself Love Man Woman Youth
The idea which tyrants find most useful is the idea of God.
STENDHAL

God Ideas Religion
Sometimes the impact of Mozart’s music is so immediate that the vision in the mind remains blurred and incomplete, while the soul seems to be directly invaded, drenched in wave upon wave of melancholy.
STENDHAL

Blurry Direct Impact Mindset Music Sadness Time Vision
The boredom of married life inevitable destroys love, when love has preceded marriage.
STENDHAL

Boredom Destroy Herself Marriage Youth

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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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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Popular Authors

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