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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.

Stendhal

The great majority of men, especially in France, both desire and possess a fashionable woman, much in the way one might own a fine horse – as a luxury befitting a young man.
STENDHAL

Animal Desire Fashion Greatness Luxury Majority Man Possession Woman Young
The idea which tyrants find most useful is the idea of God.
STENDHAL

God Ideas Religion
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
There is no such thing as “natural law”: this expression is nothing but old nonsense… Prior to laws, what is natural is only the strength of the lion, or the need of the creature suffering from hunger or cold, in short, need.
STENDHAL

Cold Hungry Law Natural Need Strength Suffering
Pleasure is often spoiled by describing it.
STENDHAL

Description Happiness Spoil
Perhaps men who cannot love passionately are those who feel the effect of beauty most keenly; at any rate this is the strongest impression women can make on them.
STENDHAL

Feeling Impression Love Man Passion Woman
The more one pleases everybody, the less one pleases profoundly.
STENDHAL

Obedience Oneself Please
When intimacy followed love in Italy there were no longer any vain pretensions between two lovers.
STENDHAL

Act Follow Intimate Love
The boredom of married life inevitable destroys love, when love has preceded marriage.
STENDHAL

Boredom Destroy Herself Marriage Youth
Our true passions are selfish.
STENDHAL

One Liner Ourselves Passion Selfish
Friendship has its illusions no less than love.
STENDHAL

Friendship Illusion Love
I used to think of deathlike I suppose soldiers think of it: it was a possible thing that I could well avoid by my skill.
STENDHAL

Avoid Death Possible Skill Soldier Thinking
Politics in the middle of things of the imagination is like a pistol shot in the middle of a concert.
STENDHAL

Concert Imagination Politics
To describe happiness is to diminish it.
STENDHAL

Description Diminish Happiness
This religion takes away the courage of thinking of unusual things and prohibits self-examination above all as the most egregious of sins. It is one step away from protestantism.
STENDHAL

Courage Examination Myself Religion Sin Thinking
Never had he found himself so close to those terrible weapons of feminine artillery.
STENDHAL

Feminine Himself Terrible Weapon

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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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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Popular Authors

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