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Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
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It's just as unpleasant to get more than you bargain for as to get less.
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Our necessities are few, but our wants are endless.
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Changeable women are more endurable that monotonous ones; they are sometimes murdered but never deserted.
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It is in the hour of trial that a man finds his true profession.
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Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open.
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A day's work is a day's work, neither more nor less, and the man or woman who does it needs a day's sustenance, a night's repose and due leisure, whether they be painter or ploughman.
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All genuinely intellectual work is humorous.
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A tranquil woman can go on sewing longer than an angry man can go on fuming.
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The only person who acts sensibly is my tailor. He takes my measure anew every time he sees me. Everyone else goes by their old measurements.
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The British churchgoer prefers a severe preacher because he thinks a few home truths will do his neighbors no harm.
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Remember that the progress of the world depends on your knowing better than your elders.
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When you loved me I gave you the whole sun and stars to play with. I gave you eternity in a single moment, strength of the mountains in one clasp of your arms, and the volume of all the seas in one impulse of your soul.
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In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language; the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.
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The most tragic thing in the world is a man of genius who is not a man of honor.
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God is on the side of the big battalions.
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Women are not angels. They are as foolish as men in many ways; but they have had to devote themselves to life whilst men have had to devote themselves to death; and that makes a vital difference in male and female religion. Women have been forced to fear whilst men have been forced to dare: the heroism of a woman is to nurse and protect life, and of a man to destroy it and court death.
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Just as the historian can teach no real history until he has cured his readers of the romantic delusion that the greatness of a queen consists in her being a pretty woman and having her head cut off, so the playwright of the first order can do nothing with his audience until he has cured them of looking at the stage through the keyhole, and sniffing round the theatre as prurient people sniff round the divorce court.
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Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.
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People have pointed out evidences of personal feeling in my notices as if they were accusing me of a misdemeanor, not knowing that criticism written without personal feeling is not worth reading. It is the capacity for making good or bad art a personal matter that makes a man a critic.
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Wise kings wear shabby clothes, and leave the gold lace to the drum major.
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To withhold deserved praise lest it should make its object conceited is as dishonest as to withhold payment of a just debt lest your creditor should spend the money badly.
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Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny; they have only shifted it to another shoulder.
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Life must not cease. That comes before everything. It is silly to say you do not care. You do care. It is that care that will prompt your imagination; inflame your desires; make your will irresistible; and create out of nothing.