Why does he not know how to select servants? The ordinary procedure of the nineteenth century is that when a powerful and noble personage encounters … - 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.

A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love

I forgot to illustrate this salon. Sir Walter Scott, and his imitators, would have started with that, but for me, I abhor material description. The trouble of making them prevents me from writing novels.

Comme tomber dans une inconvenance de parole est beaucoup plus funeste à un jeune homme qu'il ne lui est avantageux de dire un joli mot, la postérité, probablement moins niaise, ne se fera pas moins d'idée de l'insipidité de la bonne compagnie.