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Man is not free to refuse to do the thing which gives him more pleasure than any other conceivable action.
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
Gives
Pleasure
Free
Action
Giving
Thing
Men
Conceivable
Refuse
More quotes by Stendhal
When a man leaves his mistress, he runs the risk of being betrayed two or three times daily.
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The man of genius is he and he alone who finds such joy in his art that he will work at it come hell or high water.
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Logic is neither an art nor a science but a dodge.
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I think being condemned to death is the only real distinction, said Mathilde. It is the only thing which cannot be bought.
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Chélan had acted as imprudently for Julien as he had for himself. He had given him the habit of reasoning correctly, and of not being put off by empty words, but he had neglected to tell him that this habit was a crime in the person of no importance, since every piece of logical reasoning is offensive.
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The idea which tyrants find most useful is the idea of God.
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On a cold winter morning a cigar fortifies the soul.
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The pleasures and the cares of the luckiest ambition, even of limitless power, are nothing next to the intimate happiness that tenderness and love give. I am man before being a prince, and when I have the good fortune to be in love, my mistress addresses a man and not a prince.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The pleasures of love are always in proportion to our fears.
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Power, after love, is the first source of happiness.
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Women are always eagerly on the lookout for any emotion.
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Love has always been the most important business in my life I should say the only one.
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Signs cannot be represented, in a spy's report, so damningly as words.
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A good book is an event in my life.
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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.
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This is the curse of our age, even the strangest aberrations are no cure for boredom.
Stendhal
