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There was only one virtue, pugnacity; only one vice, pacifism. That is an essential condition of war.
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People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.
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There is not one single established religion that an intelligent, educated man can believe.
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A statesman who confines himself to popular legislation - or, for the matter of that, a playwright who confines himself to popular plays - is like a blind man's dog who goes wherever the blind man pulls him, on the ground that both of them want to go to the same place.
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It is the first duty of every man not to be poor.
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You will think less of the art, when you know the artist...
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An actress is not a lady; at least, when she is, she is not an actress.
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There are two things necessary to Salvation.... Money and gunpowder.
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A man's interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself. When you are a child your vessel is not yet full;so you care for nothing but your own affairs. When you grow up, your vessel overflows; and you are a politician, a philosopher, or an explorer and adventurer. In old age the vessel dries up: there is no overflow: you are a child again.
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There is the eternal war between those who are in the world for what they can get out of it and those who are in the world to make it a better place for everybody to live in.
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Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain, surround us on every hand: life itself is the miracle of miracles.
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The ordinary man is an anarchist. He wants to do as he likes. He may want his neighbour to be governed, but he himself doesn't want to be governed. He is mortally afraid of government officials and policemen.
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Leisure may be defined as free activity, labor as compulsory activity. Leisure does what it likes, labor does what it must, the compulsion being that of Nature, which in these latitudes leaves men no choice between labor and starvation.
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All very fine, Mary; but my old-fashioned common sense is better than your clever modern nonsense.
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Make me a beautiful word for doing things tomorrow; for that surely is a great and blessed invention.
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Two people getting together to write a book is like three people getting together to have a baby. One of them is superfluous.
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Rich men without convictions are more dangerous in modern society than poor women without chastity.
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We know there is intention and purpose in the universe, because there is intention and purpose in us.
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If there was twenty ways of telling the truth and only one way of telling a lie, the Government would find it out. It's in the nature of governments to tell lies.
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You don't learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking, and getting well hammered yourself.
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I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.
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The only power a god can teach is the power of doing without happiness.
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Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.
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Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.