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.
STENDHALTo be loved at first sight, a man should have at the same time something to respect and something to pity in his face.
More Stendhal Quotes
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Only great minds can afford a simple style.
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This is the curse of our age, even the strangest aberrations are no cure for boredom.
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She had caprices of a marvellous unexpectedness, and how is any one to imitate a caprice?
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It is from cowardice and not from want of enlightenment that we do not read in our own hearts.
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Now that the steam engine rules the world, a title is an absurdity, still I am all dressed up in this title. It will crush me if Ido not support it. The title attracts attention to myself.
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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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God’s only excuse is that he does not exist.
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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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Nothing is so hideous as an obsolete fashion.
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I have a bad memory for facts.
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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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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.
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A forty-year-old woman is only something to men who have loved her in her youth.
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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.
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It is better to have a prosaic husband and to take a romantic lover.
STENDHAL