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God’s only excuse is that he does not exist.

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
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
One can acquire everything in solitude except character.
STENDHAL

Acquire Character Oneself Solitude
The tyranny of public opinion (and what an opinion!) is as fatuous in the small towns of France as it is in the United States of America.
STENDHAL

Opinion Public Small Unity
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
It is not enough for a landscape to be interesting in itself. Eventually there must be a moral and historic interest.
STENDHAL

Enough History Interest Moral
She had caprices of a marvellous unexpectedness, and how is any one to imitate a caprice?
STENDHAL

Expectation Imitation Oneself
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
Napoleon was indeed the man sent by God to help the youth of France! Who is to take his place?
STENDHAL

God Help Man Place Youth
The great majority of men, especially in France, both desire and possess a fashionable woman, much in the way one might own a fine horse – as a luxury befitting a young man.
STENDHAL

Animal Desire Fashion Greatness Luxury Majority Man Possession Woman Young
Now that the steam engine rules the world, a title is an absurdity, still I am all dressed up in this title. It will crush me if Ido not support it. The title attracts attention to myself.
STENDHAL

Attention Attraction Engine Myself Rule Steam Support Weird World
It is with blows dealt by public contempt that a husband kills his wife in the nineteenth century; it is by shutting the doors ofall the drawing-rooms in her face.
STENDHAL

Draw Face Husband Kill Public Room Wife
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
The more one pleases everybody, the less one pleases profoundly.
STENDHAL

Obedience Oneself Please
Life is too short, and the time we waste in yawning never can be regained.
STENDHAL

Life Regain Short Wasted Time
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

God’s only excuse is that he does not exist.

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God’s only excuse is that he does not exist.

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Popular Authors

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