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War I abhor, and yet how sweet The sound along the marching street Of drum and fife, and I forget Wet eyes of widows, and forget Broken old mothers, and the whole Dark butchery without a soul.
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Success gives the character of honesty to some classes of wickedness.
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Human affairs are like a chess-game: only those who do not take it seriously can be called good players. Life is like an earthen pot: only when it is shattered, does it manifest its emptiness.
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A good mind possesses a kingdom.
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That which Fortune has not given, she cannot take away.
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How much does great prosperity overspread the mind with darkness.
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Life, if thou knowest how to use it, is long enough.
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As the mother's womb holds us for ten months, making us ready, not for the womb itself, but for life, just so, through our lives, we are making ourselves ready for another birth...Therefore look forward without fear to that appointed hour- the last hour of the body, but not of the soul...That day, which you fear as being the end of all things, is the birthday of your eternity.
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Everything in art is but a copy of nature.
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He who receives a benefit with gratitude, repays the first installment of it.
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Death takes us piecemeal, not at a gulp.
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It is not goodness to be better than the worst.
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What madness it is for a man to starve himself to enrich his heir, and so turn a friend into an enemy! For his joy at your death will be proportioned to what you leave him.
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You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate.
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The Germans, a race eager for war.
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The deep waters of time will flow over us: only a few men of genius will lift a head above the surface, and though doomed eventually to pass into the same silence, will fight against oblivion and for a long time hold their own.
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Auditur et altera pars. (The other side shall be heard as well.)
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It is by the benefit of letters that absent friends are in a manner brought together.
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Look at the stars lighting up the sky: no one of them stays in the same place.
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Reasons for anxiety will never be lacking, whether born of prosperity or of wretchedness; life pushes on in a succession of engrossments. We shall always pray for leisure.
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Genius has never been accepted without a measure of condonement.
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Poverty needs much, avarice everything.
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Who shrinks from knowledge of his calamities but aggravates his fear; troubles half seen, shall torture all the more.
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If you wish to be loved, love.