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

Stendhal

Perhaps men who cannot love passionately are those who feel the effect of beauty most keenly; at any rate this is the strongest impression women can make on them.
STENDHAL

Feeling Impression Love Man Passion Woman
Prudery is a kind of avarice, the worst of all.
STENDHAL

Kind Vice Worst
Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it.
STENDHAL

Description Happiness Spoil
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
A forty-year-old woman is only something to men who have loved her in her youth.
STENDHAL

Herself Love Man Woman Youth
Life is too short, and the time we waste in yawning never can be regained.
STENDHAL

Life Regain Short Wasted Time
It is from cowardice and not from want of enlightenment that we do not read in our own hearts.
STENDHAL

Coward Enlightenment Heart Ourselves Reading
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
But, if I sample this pleasure so prudently and circumspectly, it will no longer be a pleasure.
STENDHAL

Happiness Myself Pleasure Time
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
Women prefer emotions to reasoning.
STENDHAL

Emotion Preference Reason Woman
Every great action is extreme when it is undertaken. Only after it has been accomplished does it seem possible to those creatures of more common stuff.
STENDHAL

Accomplishment Creature Extreme Greatness Possible
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
Love is like a fever which comes and goes quite independently of the will. There are no age limits for love.
STENDHAL

Age Independent Love Quite Willing
In matters of sentiment, the public has very crude ideas; and the most shocking fault of women is that they make the public the supreme judge of their lives.
STENDHAL

Emotion Ideas Judgement Life Mistake Public Shock
Life is very short, and it ought not to be spent crawling at the feet of miserable scoundrels.
STENDHAL

Life Misery Short Time

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

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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