In our calling, we have to choose; we must make our fortune either in this world or in the next, there is no middle way.
STENDHALAn English traveller relates how he lived upon intimate terms with a tiger; he had reared it and used to play with it, but always kept a loaded pistol on the table.
More Stendhal Quotes
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The worst of prison life, he thought, was not being able to close his door.
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Wounded pride can take a rich young man far who is surrounded by flatterers since birth.
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I think being condemned to death is the only real distinction,” said Mathilde. “It is the only thing which cannot be bought.
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Beauty is nothing other than the promise of happiness.
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Because one has little fear of shocking vanity in Italy, people adopt an intimate tone very quickly and discuss personal things.
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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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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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Man is not free to refuse to do the thing which gives him more pleasure than any other conceivable action.
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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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True love makes the thought of death frequent, easy, without terrors; it merely becomes the standard of comparison, the price one would pay for many things.
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Life is too short, and the time we waste in yawning never can be regained.
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I think no woman I have had ever gave me so sweet a moment, or at so light a price, as the moment I owe to a newly heard musical phrase.
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I do not feel I have wisdom enough yet to love what is ugly.
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Any man who talks about his love affairs thereby proves he is ignorant of love and is moved only by vanity.
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It is the nobility of their style which will make our writers of 1840 unreadable forty years from now.
STENDHAL