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A novel is like a bow, and the violin that produces the sound is the reader's soul.
Stendhal
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Stendhal
Age: 59 †
Born: 1783
Born: January 23
Died: 1842
Died: March 23
Autobiographer
Biographer
Diarist
Novelist
Writer
Marie-Henri Beyle
Henri Beyle
Produces
Reader
Produce
Novel
Sound
Soul
Writing
Violin
Like
Bows
More quotes by Stendhal
People are less self-conscious in the intimacy of family life and during the anxiety of a great sorrow. The dazzling varnish of anextreme politeness is then less in evidence, and the true qualities of the heart regain their proper proportions.
Stendhal
In our calling, we have to choose we must make our fortune either in this world or in the next, there is no middle way.
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All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.
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The idea which tyrants find most useful is the idea of God.
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To seem sorrowful is not in good taste: You're supposed to seem bored.
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I call crystallization that action of the mind that discovers fresh perfections in its beloved at every turn of events.
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A melancholy air can never be the right thing what you want is a bored air. If you are melancholy, it must be because you want something, there is something in which you have not succeeded. It is shewing your inferiority. If you are bored, on the other hand, it is the person who has tried in vain to please you who is inferior.
Stendhal
Women are always eagerly on the lookout for any emotion.
Stendhal
Power, after love, is the first source of happiness.
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If you think of paying court to the men in power, your eternal ruin is assured.
Stendhal
The pleasures of love are always in proportion to our fears.
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I think no woman I have had ever gave me so sweet a moment, or at so light a price, as the moment I owe to a newly heard musical phrase.
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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.
Stendhal
Man is not free to refuse to do the thing which gives him more pleasure than any other conceivable action.
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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
A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.
Stendhal
Napoleon was indeed the man sent by God to help the youth of France! Who is to take his place?
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Conversationis like the table of contents of a dull book.... All the greatest subjects of human thought are proudly displayedin it. Listen to it for three minutes, and you ask yourself which is more striking, the emphasis of the speaker or his shocking ignorance.
Stendhal
I have a bad memory for facts.
Stendhal
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
