MFatih55

“It is necessary to know how to slip the all-important matter, rather hinted at than said right out, in between the description of two fashionable entertainments, without appearing to intend it. It is necessary to imply a thing by judicious reservations; let what is desired be guessed at; contradict in such a fashion as to confirm, or affirm in such a way that no one shall believe the statement”
― Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami

“Now it happened that just the night before last Julien had been to see M. Casimir Delavigne's tragedy, Marino Faliero. - Wasn't Israel Bertuccio a greater figure than all those Venetian nobles? our rebellios plebian asked himself; and yet they were men whose noble lineage can be traced back to the year 700, a century before Charlemagne, while all the best born of those who were at M. de Retz's ball this evening only go back, and even then most lamely, to the thirtheenth century. Well, good! in the mids of those Venetian nobles, so very high born, it is Israel Bertuccio one remembers.

A conspiracy annihilates all the titles produced by the arbitrary decisions of society. In it a man instantly assumes the rank given him by his manner of envisaging death. Intelligence itself loses its sway...

Where would Danton be today, in the age of Valenod and de Rênal? - not even a deputy crown prosecutor...”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“There is the great advantage they have over us," said Julien now alone in the garden. "The history of their ancestors raises them above vulgar ideas, and they do not have to think of a livelihood. It is terrible," he added, with bitterness; "I have no right to think of those great things. My life is only a series of hypocrisies because I have not a thousand francs.”
― Stendhal, The Red and the Black

“Men often pass from love to ambition, but they seldom come back again from ambition to love.”
― François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims