black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

I see but one rule: to be clear. If I am not clear, all my world crumbles to nothing.

Stendhal

A man who is half an idiot, but who keeps a sharp lookout and acts prudently all his life, often enjoys the pleasure of triumphing over men of more imagination than he.
STENDHAL

Enjoyment Himself Idiot Imagination Life Man Sharp
To describe happiness is to diminish it.
STENDHAL

Description Diminish Happiness
Mathematics allows for no hypocrisy and no vagueness.
STENDHAL

Hypocrisy Mathematics Vague
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
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
The French are the wittiest, the most charming, and up to the present, at all events, the least musical race on Earth.
STENDHAL

Charm Earth Event Present
But, if I sample this pleasure so prudently and circumspectly, it will no longer be a pleasure.
STENDHAL

Happiness Myself Pleasure Time
It is difficult to escape from the prevailing disease of one’s generation.
STENDHAL

Difficult Escape Generation Sick
The more a race is governed by its passions, the less it has acquired the habit of cautious and reasoned argument, the more intense will be its love of music.
STENDHAL

Government Habit Music Passion Race Reason
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.
STENDHAL

Eyes Highway Mirror Novel Reflection Road
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.
STENDHAL

Comparison Death Love Pay Standard Thinking True
Nothing is so hideous as an obsolete fashion.
STENDHAL

Fashion Hide
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
At a distance, we cannot conceive of the authority of a despot who knows all his subjects on sight.
STENDHAL

Authority Distance Sight Subject
Any man who talks about his love affairs thereby proves he is ignorant of love and is moved only by vanity.
STENDHAL

Ignorance Love Man Move Talk Vanity
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

I see but one rule: to be clear. If I am not clear, all my world crumbles to nothing.

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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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Popular Authors

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