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A tempest ceases, a cyclone passes over, a wind dies down, a broken mast can be replaced, a leak can be stopped, a fire extinguished, but what will become of this enormous brute of bronze?
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Friendship exists outside our modern economy of scarcity... It's not about apportioning vanishing resources of time and energy. Friendship is a blessed relic of the ancient economy of the gift, and the time freely given to people dear to you actually creates magical abundance.
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Is it not a thing divine to have a smile which, none know how, has the power to lighten the weight of that enormous chain which all the living in common drag behind them?
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I write with one hand, but I fight with both.
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Women are more credulous than men.
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True or false, that which is said of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all in their destinies, as that which they do.
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In short, I am doing what I can, I suffer with the same universal suffering, and I try to assuage it, I possess only the puny forces of a man, and I cry to all: “Help me!
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No man is more unhappy than the one who is never in adversity; the greatest affliction of life is never to be afflicted.
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What is said about men often has as much influence upon their lives, and especially upon their destinies, as what they do.
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Waterloo is a battle of the first rank won by a captain of the second.
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Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not providing a free education for all and it must answer for the night which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.
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People do not read stupidities with impunity.
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A language does not become fixed. The human intellect is always on the march, or, if you prefer, in movement, and languages with it.
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Loving is almost a substitute for thinking. Love is a burning forgetfulness of all other things. How shall we ask passion to be logical?
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God in his harmony has equal ends For cedar that resists and reed that bends; For good it is a woman sometimes rules, Holds in her hand the power, and manners, schools, And laws, and mind; succeeding master proud, With gentle voice and smiles she leads the crowd, The somber human troop.
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Mothers arms are made of tenderness, And sweet sleep blesses the child who lies therein.
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Let us leave to the brain what belongs to it, and agree that the work of the men of genius is of the superhuman, the offspring of man.
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All animals are to be found in men and each of theme exists in some man, sometimes several at the time.
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Cheerfulness is like money well expended in charity; the more we dispense of it, the greater our possession.
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Babylon violated diminishes Alexander; Rome enslaved diminishes Caesar; massacred Jerusalem diminishes Titus. Tyranny follows the tyrant. Woe to the man who leaves behind a shadow that bears his form.
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Idleness is a mother. She has a son, robbery, and a daughter, hunger.
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A translation in verse . . . seems to me something absurd, impossible.
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The hatred of luxury is not an intelligent hatred. It implies a hatred of arts.
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Revolutions are not born of chance but of necessity.