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May God never abandon me.
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If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past or the future.
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When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.
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He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God's providence to lead him aright.
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Rivers are highways that move on and bear us whither we wish to go.
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There are two kinds of people one can call reasonable: those who serve God with all their heart because they know him, and those who seek him with all their heart because they do not know him.
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It is the conduct of God, who disposes all things kindly, to put religion into the mind by reason, and into the heart by grace.
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Equality of possessions is no doubt right, but, as men could not make might obey right, they have made right obey might.
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Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.
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I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.
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Extremes are for us as if they were not, and as if we were not in regard to them; they escape from us, or we from them.
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Do you wish people to speak well of you? Then do not speak at all yourself.
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Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves.
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It is an appalling thing to feel all one possesses drain away.
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All who say the same things do not possess them in the same manner; and hence the incomparable author of the Art of Conversation pauses with so much care to make it understood that we must not judge of the capacity of a man by the excellence of a happy remark that we heard him make. Let us penetrate, says he, the mind from which it proceeds. It will oftenest be seen that he will be made to disavow it on the spot, and will be drawn very far from this better thought in which he does not believe, to plunge himself into another, quite base and ridiculous.
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Fuller believed human societies would soon rely mainly on renewable sources of energy, such as solar- and wind-derived electricity,. envisioned an age of "universal education and sustenance of all humanity". "The heart has reasons that reason does not understand."
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You gave me health that I might serve you; and so often I failed to use my good health in your service. Now you send me sickness in order to correct me Grant that, having ignored the things of spirit when my body was vigorous, I may now enjoy spiritual sweetness while my body groans with pain.
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All the good maxims which are in the world fail when applied to one's self.
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There was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present.
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All the miseries of mankind come from one thing, not knowing how to remain alone.
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When I have occasionally set myself to consider the different distractions of men, the pains and perils to which they expose themselves I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.
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Reverend Fathers, my letters did not usually follow each other at such close intervals, nor were they so long.... This one would not be so long had I but the leisure to make it shorter.
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If a man loves a woman for her beauty, does he love her? No; for the smallpox, which destroys her beauty without killing her, causes his love to cease. And if any one loves me for my judgment or my memory, does he really love me? No; for I can lose these qualities without ceasing to be.
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When some passion or effect is described in a natural style, we find within ourselves the truth of what we hear, without knowing it was there.