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One can only pour out of a jug that which is in it.
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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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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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She knew how to allure by denying, and to make the gift rich by delaying it.
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Why is it that when men and women congregate, though the men may beat the women in numbers by ten to one, and through they certainly speak the louder, the concrete sound that meets the ears of any outside listener is always a sound of women's voices?
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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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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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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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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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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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He never went very far astray in his official business, because he always obeyed the clerks and followed precedents.
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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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I have sometimes thought that there is no being so venomous, so bloodthirsty as a professed philanthropist.
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Let no man boast himself that he has got through the perils of winter till at least the seventh of May.
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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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When one wants to be natural, of necessity one becomes the reverse of natural.
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Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who has a low opinion of himself.
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The difference of the English and Irish character is nowhere more plainly discerned than in their respective kitchens. With the former, this apartment is probably the cleanest, and certainly the most orderly, in the house.... An Irish kitchenis usually a temple dedicated to the goddess of disorder; and, too often, joined with her, is the potent deity of dirt.
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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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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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You can never teach them, except by the slow lesson of habit.
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There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.
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Easy reading requires hard writing.