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

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
Clear
Nothing
World
Crumbles
Rule

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Women are always eagerly on the lookout for any emotion.
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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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All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few.
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When a man leaves his mistress, he runs the risk of being betrayed two or three times daily.
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Women prefer emotions to reasoning.
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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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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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A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.
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Almost all our misfortunes in life come from the wrong notions we have about the things that happen to us.
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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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Wounded pride can take a rich young man far who is surrounded by flatterers since birth.
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I do not feel I have wisdom enough yet to love what is ugly.
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This is the curse of our age, even the strangest aberrations are no cure for boredom.
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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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It is from cowardice and not from want of enlightenment that we do not read in our own hearts.
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The English are, I think the most obtuse and barbarous people in the world
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When intimacy followed love in Italy there were no longer any vain pretensions between two lovers.
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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.
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I no longer find such pleasure in that preeminently good society, of which I was once so fond. It seems to me that beneath a cloak of clever talk it proscribes all energy, all originality. If you are not a copy, people accuse you of being ill-mannered.
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I used to think of deathlike I suppose soldiers think of it: it was a possible thing that I could well avoid by my skill.
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