Stendhal

"The only certainty is change itself."

"A man's greatest desire is to have power over minds."

"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places."

"Nature does nothing without purpose or means."

"To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic."

"The human heart is an inexhaustible subject of study."

"Do you know what astonishes me the most in this world? The inability of force to create anything."

"The secret of happiness is to make your life a monument to your ideals."

"There is nothing more profitable for a man than to take himself seriously."

"The true test of a civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, but the kind of man that the country turns out."

"To be in love is to be forever changed."

"The greatest delight is in the smallest things."

"Wars are made by people who do not understand what they are talking about."

"The most important talent is to know when to stop."

"The mind preoccupied with anxiety cannot think clearly about the future."

"Beauty is the promise of happiness."

"A man is not necessarily intelligent because he has plenty of talk."

"The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude."

"I have always thought that the surest way to keep a secret is to never tell it."

"Music is the only language in which you cannot say a mean or sarcastic thing."

"Ambition is pitiable in a creature such as man—so short-lived, so miserable."

"One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often."

"The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of."

"There is no greater folly than that of the man who fancies himself wise."

"A novel is a mirror carried along a main road."

"Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great."

"I am too high-minded to be ambitious."

"Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius."

"The sight of a large sum in a man's bank account has a strong effect on his character."

"A person of the greatest ability is often the least humble."