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Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and you can look out of the window and see the blue sky - or the answer is wrong and you have to start over and try again and see how it comes out this time.
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Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.
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Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
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I learned you can't trust the judgment of good friends.
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To work hard, to live hard, to die hard, and then go to hell after all would be too damn hard.
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A book is never a masterpiece: it becomes one. Genius is the talent of a dead man.
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All human actions are equivalent... and all are on principle doomed to failure.
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I never made a mistake in grammar but one in my life and as soon as I done it I seen it.
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I had taken a course in Ethics. I read a thick textbook, heard the class discussions and came out of it saying I hadn't learned a thing I didn't know before about morals and what is right or wrong in human conduct.
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Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders.
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Lay me on an anvil, O God. Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar. Let me pry loose old walls. Let me lift and loosen old foundations.
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I have become infected, now that I see how beautifully a book is coming out of all this.
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We had two grand antique professors who had been teaching at Lombard since before I was born.
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The greatest cunning is to have none at all.
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Let the gentle bush dig its root deep and spread upward to split one boulder.
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There are 10 men in me and I do not know or understand one of them.
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I can remember only a few of the strange and curious words now dead but living and spoken by the English people a thousand years ago.
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I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth.
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Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.
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There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud.
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I knew I would read all kinds of books and try to get at what it is that makes good writers good. But I made no promises that I would write books a lot of people would like to read.
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One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude.
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Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.
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Shame is the feeling you have when you agree with the woman who loves you that you are the man she thinks you are.