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All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.

Stendhal

Your career will be a painful one. I divine something in you which offends the vulgar.
STENDHAL

Career Divine Offend Pain Vulgur
People who have been made to suffer by certain things cannot be reminded of them without a horror which paralyses every other pleasure, even that to be found in reading a story.
STENDHAL

Happiness People Pleasure Reading Remind Suffering
It is not enough for a landscape to be interesting in itself. Eventually there must be a moral and historic interest.
STENDHAL

Enough History Interest Moral
Indeed, man has two different beings inside him. What devil thought of that malicious touch?
STENDHAL

Devil Different Man Touch
When you want to court a woman, court her sister first
STENDHAL

Court Herself Sister Woman Yourself
I call “crystallization” that action of the mind that discovers fresh perfections in its beloved at every turn of events.
STENDHAL

Action Crystal Discover Event Mindset
Our true passions are selfish.
STENDHAL

One Liner Ourselves Passion Selfish
To be loved at first sight, a man should have at the same time something to respect and something to pity in his face.
STENDHAL

Face Himself Love Pity Respect Sight
I think being condemned to death is the only real distinction,” said Mathilde. “It is the only thing which cannot be bought.
STENDHAL

Bought Death Reality Thinking
I love her beauty, but I fear her mind.
STENDHAL

Beautiful Fear Herself Love Mindset
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.
STENDHAL

Accomplishment Creature Extreme Greatness Possible
At a distance, we cannot conceive of the authority of a despot who knows all his subjects on sight.
STENDHAL

Authority Distance Sight Subject
If you don’t love me, it does not matter, anyway I can love for both of us.
STENDHAL

Love Matter Myself Ourselves
Every true passion thinks only of itself.
STENDHAL

Passion Thinking True
Signs cannot be represented, in a spy’s report, so damningly as words.
STENDHAL

Report Representation Word
The sight of anything extremely beautiful, in nature or in art, brings back the memory of what one loves, with the speed of lightning.
STENDHAL

Beautiful Light Love Sight Speed
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.
STENDHAL

Death Fools Grief Man Ordinary Personage Powerful Procedure
Nothing is so hideous as an obsolete fashion.
STENDHAL

Fashion Hide
An 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.
STENDHAL

Himself Intimate Live Load Play Relate Travel Weapon
Man is not free to refuse to do the thing which gives him more pleasure than any other conceivable action.
STENDHAL

Action Freedom Man Pleasure Refusal
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.
STENDHAL

Better Collection Future Hope Lost Love Passion Yourself
Love is like a fever which comes and goes quite independently of the will. There are no age limits for love.
STENDHAL

Age Independent Love Quite Willing
Great ladies are no more spiteful than the average rich woman; but one acquires in their society a greater susceptibility, and feels more profoundly andmore irremediably, their unpleasant remarks.
STENDHAL

Average Feeling Greatness Lady Remark Rich Society Woman
The Russians imitate French ways, but always at a distance of fifty years.
STENDHAL

Distance Imitation Time
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.
STENDHAL

Attention Attraction Engine Myself Rule Steam Support Weird World
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
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

All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.

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All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.

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