Life is very short, and it ought not to be spent crawling at the feet of miserable scoundrels.
STENDHALPower, after love, is the first source of happiness.
More Stendhal Quotes
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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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Faith, I am no such fool; everyone for himself in this desert of selfishness which is called life.
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Beauty is nothing other than the promise of happiness.
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Our true passions are selfish.
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A very small matter, when all is said; only a fool would be concerned about it.
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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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If you want to be witty, work on your character and say what you think on every occasion.
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The sight of anything extremely beautiful, in nature or in art, brings back the memory of what one loves, with the speed of lightning.
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Far less envy in America than in France.
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Why not make an end of it all? My life is a succession of griefs and bitter feelings. What is death? A very small matter, when all is said; only a fool would be concerned about it.
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Wounded pride can take a rich young man far who is surrounded by flatterers since birth.
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Only great minds can afford a simple style.
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One of the traits of genius is not to drag its thought through the rut worn by vulgar minds.
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To seem sorrowful is not in good taste: You’re supposed to seem bored.
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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.
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Spring appears and we are once more children.
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Logic is neither an art nor a science but a dodge.
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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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Prudery is a kind of avarice, the worst of all.
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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.
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The only unhappiness is a life of boredom.
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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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Mathematics allows for no hypocrisy and no vagueness.
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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.
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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.
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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.
STENDHAL