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Great men always pay deference to greater.
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No ashes are lighter than those of incense, and few things burn out sooner.
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There is no easy path leading out of life, and few easy ones that lie within it.
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There is nothing on earth divine except humanity.
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We often fancy that we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we suffer from self-love.
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Consult duty not events.
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There are no fields of amaranth on this side of the grave: there are no voices, O Rhodopè! that are not soon mute, however tuneful: there is no name, with whatever emphasis of passionate love repeated, of which the echo is not faint at last.
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The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander.
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Men, like nails, lose their usefulness when they lose their direction and begin to bend.
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Wearers of rings and chains!Pray do not take the pains To set me right.In vain my faults ye quote;I write as others wrote On Sunium’s hight.
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Prose on certain occasions can bear a great deal of poetry; on the other hand, poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate weight of prose.
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We talk on principal, but act on motivation.
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Stand close around, ye Stygian set,with Dirce in the boat conveyed,Lest Charon, seeing her, forget,That he is old and she a shade.
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Ambition has but one reward for all: A little power, a little transient fame; A grave to rest in, and a fading name!
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Every sect is a moral check on its neighbour. Competition is as wholesome in religion as in commerce.
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We are no longer happy so soon as we wish to be happier.
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No thoroughly occupied person was ever found really miserable.
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Ah what avails the sceptered race,Ah what the form divine!
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There is delight in singing, though none hear beside the singer.
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I am heartily glad to witness your veneration for a Book which to say nothing of its holiness or authority, contains more specimens of genius and taste than any other volume in existence.
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The damps of autumn sink into the leaves and prepare them for the necessity of their fall; and thus insensibly are we, as years close around us, detached from our tenacity of life by the gentle pressure of recorded sorrow.
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When we play the fool, how wideThe theatre expands! beside,How long the audience sits before us!How many prompters! what a chorus!
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Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's,Therefore on him no speech! and brief for thee,Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale,No man hath walked along our roads with stepSo active, so inquiring eye, or tongueSo varied in discourse.
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But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue...Shake one, and it awakens; then applyIts polished lips to your attentive ear,And it remembers its august abodes,And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there.