Stendhal

"The sight of a great city is like reading the Iliad."

"When a man is in love he is incapable of any crimes."

"I believe that, if one is truly to succeed in literature, one must be rather cold-blooded about it."

"The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank."

"Never speak of your happiness to one less fortunate than yourself."

"The great irony is that we are almost never unhappy in the way we expected."

"War is like love, it always finds a way."

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that very existence is an act of rebellion."

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

"The greatest happiness is to vanquish your enemies, to chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth, and to listen to the lamentations of their families."

"Beauty is nothing other than a promise of happiness."

"I have discovered that we may be in some degree whatever character we choose."

"One can acquire everything in solitude except character."

"The human heart has its seasons, just as the earth does."

"Prudery is a kind of avarice, the worst of all."

"To describe love is very difficult, the more I try, the more I fail."

"The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things."

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

"Nothing is less sincere than the way people speak of their own affairs."

"Every man has the right to risk his own life for the preservation of it."

"I commit myself to nothing but the truth."

"The pleasure of suddenly understanding a previously misunderstood or an obscure biblical text is very great."

"We must always arrange our thoughts so that they seem more perfect than they could possibly be."

"Success in life does not depend on genius; it depends on perseverance."

"The human spirit can accomplish wonders if it believes."

"Men are not at all in a humor for talking unless they are at their ease."

"The worst thing that can happen is to live and be forgotten."

"I am too sincere to be fashionable."

"A man should not live like an animal in a house, but should live like a human being."

"The great commandment of life is to renew continually the things of which we are fond."