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A novel is like a bow, and the violin that produces the sound is the reader’s soul.

Stendhal

Faith, I am no such fool; everyone for himself in this desert of selfishness which is called life.
STENDHAL

Desert Faith Fool Happiness Life
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
It is difficult to escape from the prevailing disease of one’s generation.
STENDHAL

Difficult Escape Generation Sick
It is the nobility of their style which will make our writers of 1840 unreadable forty years from now.
STENDHAL

Noble Past Reading Style Time Writing
But, if I sample this pleasure so prudently and circumspectly, it will no longer be a pleasure.
STENDHAL

Happiness Myself Pleasure Time
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.
STENDHAL

Anxiety Conscious Evidence Family Heart Intimacy Life People Polite Quality
War was then no longer this noble and unified outburst of souls in love with glory that he had imagined from Napoleon’s proclamations.
STENDHAL

Glory Himself Imagination Noble War
The first qualification for a historian is to have no ability to invent.
STENDHAL

Ability History Invention Qualification
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.
STENDHAL

End Feeling Fools Grief Life Myself Success
I have a bad memory for facts.
STENDHAL

Bad Fact Memories Myself
Only great minds can afford a simple style.
STENDHAL

Afford Greatness Lifestyle Mindset Simplicity
I am mad, I am going under, I must follow the advice of a friend, and pay no heed to myself.
STENDHAL

Advice Friendship Mad Myself Pay
I love her beauty, but I fear her mind.
STENDHAL

Beautiful Fear Herself Love Mindset
The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
STENDHAL

Close Himself Life Prison Thinking Worst
Who knows whether it is not true that phosphorus and mind are not the same thing?
STENDHAL

Different Known Mindset True
Nothing is so hideous as an obsolete fashion.
STENDHAL

Fashion Hide

A novel is like a bow, and the violin that produces the sound is the reader’s soul.

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A novel is like a bow, and the violin that produces the sound is the reader’s soul.

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Popular Authors

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