black
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At a distance, we cannot conceive of the authority of a despot who knows all his subjects on sight.

Stendhal

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.
STENDHAL

Draw Face Husband Kill Public Room Wife
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
The boredom of married life inevitable destroys love, when love has preceded marriage.
STENDHAL

Boredom Destroy Herself Marriage Youth
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
This is the curse of our age, even the strangest aberrations are no cure for boredom.
STENDHAL

Age Boredom Cure Curse Strange
Any man who talks about his love affairs thereby proves he is ignorant of love and is moved only by vanity.
STENDHAL

Ignorance Love Man Move Talk Vanity
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.
STENDHAL

Brain Fear Live Man Power Regain Religion Virtue Way Young
There are as many styles of beauty as there are visions of happiness.
STENDHAL

Beautiful Happiness Style Vision
Almost all our misfortunes in life come from the wrong notions we have about the things that happen to us.
STENDHAL

Life Ourselves Perspective Wrong
To seem sorrowful is not in good taste: You’re supposed to seem bored.
STENDHAL

Bored Goodness Sorrow Taste
The first qualification for a historian is to have no ability to invent.
STENDHAL

Ability History Invention Qualification
But, if I sample this pleasure so prudently and circumspectly, it will no longer be a pleasure.
STENDHAL

Happiness Myself Pleasure Time
She had caprices of a marvellous unexpectedness, and how is any one to imitate a caprice?
STENDHAL

Expectation Imitation Oneself
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
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
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.
STENDHAL

Absence Class Education Energy Family Love Necessary Struggle Survive

At a distance, we cannot conceive of the authority of a despot who knows all his subjects on sight.

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At a distance, we cannot conceive of the authority of a despot who knows all his subjects on sight.

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