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If you want to be witty, work on your character and say what you think on every occasion.
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
Tongue
Character
Work
Every
Think
Thinking
Occasion
Witty
Occasions
More quotes by Stendhal
On a cold winter morning a cigar fortifies the soul.
Stendhal
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
A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.
Stendhal
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
Women prefer emotions to reasoning.
Stendhal
The ordinary procedure of the nineteenth century is that when a powerful and noble personage encounters a man of feeling, he kills, exiles, imprisons or so humiliates him that the other, like a fool, dies of grief.
Stendhal
The Russians imitate French ways, but always at a distance of fifty years.
Stendhal
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
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.
Stendhal
One-half, the finest half, of life is hidden from the man who does not love with passion.
Stendhal
The boredom of married life inevitable destroys love, when love has preceded marriage.
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
...one of the traits of genius is not to drag its thought through the rut worn by vulgar minds.
Stendhal
I see but one rule: to be clear. If I am not clear, all my world crumbles to nothing.
Stendhal
Logic is neither an art nor a science but a dodge.
Stendhal
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.
Stendhal
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.
Stendhal
I call crystallization that action of the mind that discovers fresh perfections in its beloved at every turn of events.
Stendhal
When a man leaves his mistress, he runs the risk of being betrayed two or three times daily.
Stendhal
The idea which tyrants find most useful is the idea of God.
Stendhal
