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She knew how to allure by denying, and to make the gift rich by delaying it.
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Late hours, nocturnal cigars, and midnight drinkings, pleasurable though they may be, consume too quickly the free-flowing lamps of youth, and are fatal at once to the husbanded candle-ends of age.
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She was as one who, in madness, was resolute to throw herself from a precipice, but to whom some remnant of sanity remained which forced her to seek those who would save her from herself.
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An editor is bound to avoid the meshes of the law, which are always infinitely more costly to companies, or things, or institutions, than they are to individuals.
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The secrets of the world are very marvellous, but they are not themselves half so wonderful as the way in which they become known to the world.
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Every man worships the dollar, and is down before his shrine from morning to night... Other men, the world over, worship regularly at the shrine with matins and vespers, nones and complines, and whatever other daily services may be known to the religious houses; but the New Yorker is always on his knees.
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As will so often be the case when a men has a pen in his hand. It is like a club or sledge-hammer, - in using which, either for defence or attack, a man can hardly measure the strength of the blows he gives.
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The circumstances seemed to be simple; but they who understood such matters declared that the duration of a trial depended a great deal more on the public interest felt in the matter than upon its own nature.
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To have her meals, and her daily walk, and her fill of novels, and to be left alone, was all that she asked of the gods.
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When the ivy has found its tower, when the delicate creeper has found its strong wall, we know how the parasite plants grow and prosper.
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My sweetheart is to me more than a coined hemisphere.
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We all profess to believe when we're told that this world should be used merely as a preparation for the next; and yet there is something so cold and comfortless in the theory that we do not relish the prospect even for our children.
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It is the necessary nature of a political party in this country to avoid, as long as it can be avoided, the consideration of any question which involves a great change.
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I have sometimes thought that there is no being so venomous, so bloodthirsty as a professed philanthropist.
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I have no ambition to surprise my reader. Castles with unknown passages are not compatible with my homely muse.
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He never went very far astray in his official business, because he always obeyed the clerks and followed precedents.
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There is no road to wealth so easy and respectable as that of matrimony.
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When one wants to be natural, of necessity one becomes the reverse of natural.
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In former days, when there were Whigs instead of Liberals, it was almost a rule of political life that all leading Whigs sould be uncles, brothers-in-law, or cousins to each other. This was pleasant and gave great consistency to the party; but the system has now gone out of vogue.
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Satire, though it may exaggerate the vice it lashes, is not justified in creating it in order that it may be lashed.
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Never let the estate decrease in your hands. It is only by such resolutions as that that English noblemen and English gentlemen can preserve their country. I cannot bear to see property changing hands.
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You can never teach them, except by the slow lesson of habit.
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Lord Chiltern recognizes the great happiness of having a grievance. It would be a pity that so great a blessing should be thrown away upon him.
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The bucolic mind of East Barsetshire took warm delight in the eloquence of the eminent personage who represented them, but was wont to extract more actual enjoyment from the music of his periods than from the strength of his arguments.