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

Stendhal

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

Report Representation Word
Why not make an end of it all? My life is a succession of griefs and bitter feelings. What is death? A very small matter, when all is said; only a fool would be concerned about it.
STENDHAL

End Feeling Fools Grief Life Myself Success
Love has always been the most important business in my life; I should say the only one.
STENDHAL

Business Important Life Love Myself Oneself
The idea which tyrants find most useful is the idea of God.
STENDHAL

God Ideas Religion
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.
STENDHAL

Blurry Direct Impact Mindset Music Sadness Time Vision
It is with blows dealt by public contempt that a husband kills his wife in the nineteenth century; it is by shutting the doors ofall the drawing-rooms in her face.
STENDHAL

Draw Face Husband Kill Public Room Wife
When you want to court a woman, court her sister first
STENDHAL

Court Herself Sister Woman Yourself
A very small matter, when all is said; only a fool would be concerned about it.
STENDHAL

Concern Fools Small Thinking
The pleasures of love are always in proportion to our fears.
STENDHAL

Fear Love Ourselves Proportion
A wise woman never yields by appointment. It should always be an unforeseen happiness.
STENDHAL

Appointment Happiness Wisdom Woman
On a cold winter morning a cigar fortifies the soul.
STENDHAL

Hard Soul Winter
To find love in Paris you must go down among those classes where the absence of education and of vanity, and the struggle for bare necessities, have allowed more energy to survive.
STENDHAL

Absence Class Education Energy Family Love Necessary Struggle Survive
It is from cowardice and not from want of enlightenment that we do not read in our own hearts.
STENDHAL

Coward Enlightenment Heart Ourselves Reading
Friendship has its illusions no less than love.
STENDHAL

Friendship Illusion Love
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.
STENDHAL

Break Character Generosity Life Pride Question Sacrifice Woman
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
One of the traits of genius is not to drag its thought through the rut worn by vulgar minds.
STENDHAL

Drag Genius Mindset Thinking Vulgar
The boredom of married life inevitable destroys love, when love has preceded marriage.
STENDHAL

Boredom Destroy Herself Marriage Youth
To seem sorrowful is not in good taste: You’re supposed to seem bored.
STENDHAL

Bored Goodness Sorrow Taste
The difference breeds hatred.
STENDHAL

Breed Difference Hate One Liner
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
The English are, I think the most obtuse and barbarous people in the world
STENDHAL

Myself Nature People Thinking World
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
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
Because one has little fear of shocking vanity in Italy, people adopt an intimate tone very quickly and discuss personal things.
STENDHAL

Fear Personal Quick Shock Thing
I do not feel I have wisdom enough yet to love what is ugly.
STENDHAL

Enough Feeling Love Myself Ugly Wisdom
The first qualification for a historian is to have no ability to invent.
STENDHAL

Ability History Invention Qualification

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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