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We could never have loved the earth so well if we had no childhood in it if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass . . .
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What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known, and loved because it is known?
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We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our hurts— not to hurt others.
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The miller's daughter of fourteen could not believe that high gentry behaved badly to their wives, but her mother instructed her - 'Oh, child, men's men: gentle or simple, they're much of a muchness...'
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Ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities.
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What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other? I cannot be indifferent to the troubles of a man who advised me in my trouble, and attended me in my illness.
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Time, like money, is measured by our needs.
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One can say everything best over a meal.
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One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!
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I began … to watch with peculiar alarm lest what I called my philosophic estimate of the human lot in general, should be a mere prose lyric expressing my own pain and consequent bad temper.
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Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.
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Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.
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Doubtless a great anguish may do the work of years, and we may come out from that baptism of fire with a soul full of new awe and new pity.
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The dew-bead Gem of earth and sky begotten.
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He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.
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I think any hardship is better than pretending to do what one is paid for, and never really doing it.
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Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty.
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Ugly and deformed people have great need of unusual virtues, because they are likely to be extremely uncomfortable without them.
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The world would have a new dreariness for her, as a wilderness that a magician’s spells had turned for a little while into a garden.
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Jubal sat lonely, all around was dim, Yet his face glowed with light revealed to him
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Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.
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'Tis God gives skill,But not without men's hands: He could not makeAntonio Stradivari's violinsWithout Antonio.
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Instead of trying to still his fears he encouraged them, with that superstitious impression which clings to us all, that if we expect evil very strongly it is the less likely to come; . . .
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There's good chances and bad chances, and nobody's luck is pulled only by one string.