Great ladies are no more spiteful than the average rich woman; but one acquires in their society a greater susceptibility, and feels more profoundly and ... more irremediably, their unpleasant remarks.
ATTRIBUTION:
Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842), French novelist. Armance, ch. XXV, Urbain Canel (1827), trans. C.K. Scott-Moncrieff, 1946.
