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The most general deficiency in our sort of culture and education is gradually dawning on me: no one learns, no one strives towards, no one teaches--enduring loneliness.
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Whoever gives advice to a sick person acquires a feeling of superiority over him, whether the advice be accepted or rejected.
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Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose.
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Democratic institutions form a system of quarantine for tyrannical desires.
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It says nothing against the ripeness of a spirit that it has a few worms.
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To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.
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Cows sometimes wear an expression resembling wonderment arrested on its way to becoming a question. In the eye of superior intelligence, on the other hand, lies the nil admirari spread out like the monotony of a cloudless sky.
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The lack of closeness among friends is a fault that cannot be reprimanded without becoming incurable.
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The only thing of interest in a refuted system is the personal element. It alone is what is forever irrefutable.
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Pity makes suffering contagious.
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You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.
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Never trust a thought that didn't come by walking.
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The coward does not know what it means to be alone: an enemy is always standing behind his chair.
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Stupid as a man, say the women: cowardly as a woman, say the men. Stupidity in a woman is unwomanly.
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To discover he is loved in return ought really to disenchant the lover with the beloved.
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Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.
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The 'kingdom of Heaven' is a condition of the heart - not something that comes 'upon the earth' or 'after death.'
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The word 'Christianity' is already a misunderstanding - in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross.
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One can promise actions, but not feelings, for the latter are involuntary. He who promises to love forever or hate forever or be forever faithful to someone is promising something that is not in his power.
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The degree and kind of a man's sexuality reach up into the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit.
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Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.
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The most intelligent men, like the strongest, find their happiness where others would find only disaster: in the labyrinth, in being hard with themselves and with others, in effort; their delight is self-mastery; in them asceticism becomes second nature, a necessity, as instinct.
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It is thus only this personal feeling of misery that we get rid of by acts of pity.
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Egoism is the law of perspective applied to feelings: what is closest appears large and weighty, and as one moves farther away size and weight decrease.