The first qualification for a historian is to have no ability to invent. - Stendhal

A man may meet a woman and be shocked by her ugliness. Soon, if she is natural and unaffected, her expression makes him overlook the faults of her features. He begins to find her charming, it enters his head that she might be loved, and a week later he is living in hope. The following week he has been snubbed into despair, and the week afterwards he has gone mad. (Chapter 17)

The dinner was indifferent and the conversation irritating. "It's like the table of contents of a dull book," thought Julien. "All the greatest subjects of human thought are proudly displayed in it. Listen to it for three minutes, and you ask yourself which is more striking, the emphasis of the speaker or his shocking ignorance."

Il [le jeune pianiste] avait appris à admirer tel morceau, la première qualité était toujours, dans un son, d'être juste, dans une phrase, d'être correcte. À mes yeux, la première qualité, de bien loin, est d'être expressif.