Sébastien-Roch Nicolas Quotes
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Pleasure may come from illusion, but happiness can come only of reality.
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He who disguises tyranny, protection, or even benefits under the air and name of friendship reminds me of the guilty priest who poisoned the sacramental bread.
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Almost the whole of history is but a sequence of horrors.
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Egotism is the tongue of vanity.
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Spero Speroni explains admirably how an author who writes very clearly for himself is often obscure to his readers. "It is," he says, "because the author proceeds from the thought to the expression, and the reader from the expression to the thought.
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Most benefactors are like unskillful generals who take the city and leave the citadel intact.
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Narrow waists and narrow minds go together.
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The new friends whom we make after attaining a certain age and by whom we would fain replace those whom we have lost, are to our old friends what glass eyes, false teeth and wooden legs are to real eyes, natrual teeth and legs of flesh and bone.
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Nature in causing reason and the passions to be born at one and the same time apparently wished by the latter gift to distract man from the evil she had done him by the former, and by only permitting him to live for a few years after the loss of his passions seems to show her pity by early deliverance from a life that reduces him to reason as his sole resource.
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Prudence replaces strength by saving the man who has the misfortune of not possessing it from most occasions when it's needed.
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There are more people who wish to be loved than there are who are willing to love.
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Intelligent people make many mistakes because they cannot believe the world is really as foolish as it is.
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Women see faults much more readily in each other than they can discover perfections.
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Thought consoles us for all, and heals all. If at times it does you ill, ask it for the remedy for that ill and it will give it to you.
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Most anthologists of poetry or quotations are like those who eat cherries or oysters, first picking the best and ending by eating everything.
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The sunset glow of self-possession.
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Men whose only concern is other people's opinion of them are like actors who put on a poor performance to win the applause of people of poor taste; some of them would be capable of good acting in front of a good audience. A decent man plays his part to the best of his ability, regardless of the taste of the gallery.
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Eminence without merit earns deference without esteem.
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He who leaves the game wins it.
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Marriage follows on love as smoke on flame.
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In the fine arts, as in many other things, we know well only what we have not learned.
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Chance is a nickname for Providence.
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Tragedy has the great moral defect of giving too much importance to life and death.
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A person of intellect without energy added to it, is a failure.