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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

It is difficult to escape from the prevailing disease of one’s generation.
STENDHAL

Difficult Escape Generation Sick
A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love.
STENDHAL

Born Degree Hope Love Small
The boredom of married life inevitable destroys love, when love has preceded marriage.
STENDHAL

Boredom Destroy Herself Marriage Youth
Politics in the middle of things of the imagination is like a pistol shot in the middle of a concert.
STENDHAL

Concert Imagination Politics
A novel is a mirror which passes over a highway. Sometimes it reflects to your eyes the blue of the skies, at others the churned-up mud of the road.
STENDHAL

Eyes Highway Mirror Novel Reflection Road
Love is a well from which we can drink only as much as we have put in, and the stars that shine from it are only our eyes looking in.
STENDHAL

Drink Eyes Love Ourselves Shine Stardom
A very small matter, when all is said; only a fool would be concerned about it.
STENDHAL

Concern Fools Small Thinking
Man is not free to refuse to do the thing which gives him more pleasure than any other conceivable action.
STENDHAL

Action Freedom Man Pleasure Refusal
I love her beauty, but I fear her mind.
STENDHAL

Beautiful Fear Herself Love Mindset
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
The English are, I think the most obtuse and barbarous people in the world
STENDHAL

Myself Nature People Thinking World
Women prefer emotions to reasoning.
STENDHAL

Emotion Preference Reason Woman
A forty-year-old woman is only something to men who have loved her in her youth.
STENDHAL

Herself Love Man Woman Youth
To describe happiness is to diminish it.
STENDHAL

Description Diminish Happiness
Nothing is so hideous as an obsolete fashion.
STENDHAL

Fashion Hide
The only unhappiness is a life of boredom.
STENDHAL

Boredom Happiness Life
Signs cannot be represented, in a spy’s report, so damningly as words.
STENDHAL

Report Representation Word
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
I see but one rule: to be clear.
STENDHAL

Clear Rule See
On a cold winter morning a cigar fortifies the soul.
STENDHAL

Hard Soul Winter
I am mad, I am going under, I must follow the advice of a friend, and pay no heed to myself.
STENDHAL

Advice Friendship Mad Myself Pay
To be loved at first sight, a man should have at the same time something to respect and something to pity in his face.
STENDHAL

Face Himself Love Pity Respect Sight
After moral poisoning, one requires physical remedies and a bottle of champagne.
STENDHAL

Alcohol Bottle Champagne Moral Physical Poison
People happy in love have an air of intensity.
STENDHAL

Happiness Intensity Love People
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
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
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

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.

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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.

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