Stendhal

Power, after love, is the first source of happiness.

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.

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._x000D_ 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.

Love is a well from which we can drink only as much as we have put in, and the stars that shine from it are only our eyes looking in.

A woman of generous character will sacrifice her life a thousand times over for her lover, but will break with him for ever over a question of pride.

The boredom of married life inevitable destroys love, when love has preceded marriage.

...one of the traits of genius is not to drag its thought through the rut worn by vulgar minds.

But, if I sample this pleasure so prudently and circumspectly, it will no longer be a pleasure.

Indeed, man has two different beings inside him. What devil thought of that malicious touch?

The tyranny of public opinion (and what an opinion!) is as fatuous in the small towns of France as it is in the United States of America.

I love her beauty, but I fear her mind.