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.
STENDHALThe 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.
More Stendhal Quotes
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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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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.
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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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God’s only excuse is that he does not exist.
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When a man leaves his mistress, he runs the risk of being betrayed two or three times daily.
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Politics in the middle of things of the imagination is like a pistol shot in the middle of a concert.
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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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In love, unlike most other passions, the recollection of what you have had and lost is always better than what you can hope for in the future.
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War was then no longer this noble and unified outburst of souls in love with glory that he had imagined from Napoleon’s proclamations.
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The ordinary procedure of the nineteenth century is that when a powerful and noble personage encounters a man of feeling, he kills, exiles, imprisons or so humiliates him that the other, like a fool, dies of grief.
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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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Our true passions are selfish.
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The French are the wittiest, the most charming, and up to the present, at all events, the least musical race on Earth.
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Signs cannot be represented, in a spy’s report, so damningly as words.
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I have a bad memory for facts.
STENDHAL