One-half, the finest half, of life is hidden from the man who does not love with passion.
STENDHALThe 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.
More Stendhal Quotes
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The idea which tyrants find most useful is the idea of God.
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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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But, if I sample this pleasure so prudently and circumspectly, it will no longer be a pleasure.
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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.
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The first virtue of a young man today – that is, for the next fifty years perhaps, as long as we live in fear, and religion has regained its powers – is to be incapable of enthusiasm and not to have much in the way of brains.
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Nothing is so hideous as an obsolete fashion.
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The pleasures of love are always in proportion to our fears.
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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.
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I call “crystallization” that action of the mind that discovers fresh perfections in its beloved at every turn of events.
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A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.
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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.
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Life is very short, and it ought not to be spent crawling at the feet of miserable scoundrels.
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It is the nobility of their style which will make our writers of 1840 unreadable forty years from now.
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I am mad, I am going under, I must follow the advice of a friend, and pay no heed to myself.
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Prudery is a kind of avarice, the worst of all.
STENDHAL