The sight of anything extremely beautiful, in nature or in art, brings back the memory of what one loves, with the speed of lightning.
STENDHALGod’s only excuse is that he does not exist.
More Stendhal Quotes
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Our true passions are selfish.
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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.
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To be loved at first sight, a man should have at the same time something to respect and something to pity in his face.
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Women are always eagerly on the lookout for any emotion.
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A good book is an event in my life.
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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.
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A very small matter, when all is said; only a fool would be concerned about it.
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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.
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I see but one rule: to be clear. If I am not clear, all my world crumbles to nothing.
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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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The more a race is governed by its passions, the less it has acquired the habit of cautious and reasoned argument, the more intense will be its love of music.
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An English traveller relates how he lived upon intimate terms with a tiger; he had reared it and used to play with it, but always kept a loaded pistol on the table.
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Almost all our misfortunes in life come from the wrong notions we have about the things that happen to us.
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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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Politics in the middle of things of the imagination is like a pistol shot in the middle of a concert.
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Love has always been the most important business in my life; I should say the only one.
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Signs cannot be represented, in a spy’s report, so damningly as words.
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The idea which tyrants find most useful is the idea of God.
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Faith, I am no such fool; everyone for himself in this desert of selfishness which is called life.
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I think being condemned to death is the only real distinction,” said Mathilde. “It is the only thing which cannot be bought.
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Friendship has its illusions no less than love.
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A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love.
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Love is like a fever which comes and goes quite independently of the will. There are no age limits for love.
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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.
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On a cold winter morning a cigar fortifies the soul.
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Every true passion thinks only of itself.
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