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The sober devil can hide his cloven hoof; but when the devil drinks he loses his cunning and grows honest.
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I think the greatest rogues are they who talk most of their honesty.
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No living orator would convince a grocer that coffee should be sold without chicory; and no amount of eloquence will make an English lawyer think that loyalty to truth should come before loyalty to his client.
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When a man wants to write a book full of unassailable facts, he always goes to the British Museum.
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Ride at any fence hard enough, and the chances are you'll get over. The harder you ride the heavier the fall, if you get a fall; but the greater the chance of your getting over.
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Short accounts make long friends.
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An enemy might at any time become a friend, but while an enemy was an enemy he should be trodden on and persecuted.
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Let a man be of what side he may in politics, unless he be much more of a partisan than a patriot, he will think it well that there should be some equity of division in the bestowal of crumbs of comfort.
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I do like a little romance... just a sniff, as I call it, of the rocks and valleys. Of course, bread-and-cheese is the real thing. The rocks and valleys are no good at all, if you haven't got that.
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High rank and soft manners may not always belong to a true heart.
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A woman's life is not perfect or whole till she has added herself to a husband. Nor is a man's life perfect or whole till he has added to himself a wife.
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It is my purpose to disclose the mystery at once, and to ask you to look for your interest,--should you choose to go on with my chronicle,--simply in the conduct of my persons, during this disclosure to others.
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If a cook can't make soup between two and seven, she can't make it in a week.
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Little bits of things make me do it; — perhaps a word that I said and ought not to have said ten years ago; — the most ordinary little mistakes, even my own past thoughts to myself about the merest trifles. They are always making me shiver.
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As to happiness in this life it is hardly compatible with that diminished respect which ever attends the relinquishing of labour.
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This habit of reading, I make bold to tell you, is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will support you when all other recreations are gone. It will last until your death. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.
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Men who cannot believe in the mystery of our Saviour's redemption can believe that spirits from the dead have visited them in a stranger's parlour, because they see a table shake and do not know how it is shaken; because they hear a rapping on a board, and cannot see the instrument that raps it; because they are touched in the dark, and do not know the hand that touches them.
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A bull in a china shop is not a useful animal, nor is he ornamental, but there can be no doubt of his energy. The hare was full of energy, but he didn't win the race. The man who stands still is the man who keeps his ground.
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That I can read and be happy while I am reading, is a great blessing. Could I have remembered, as some men do, what I read, I should have been able to call myself an educated man. But that power I have never possessed. Something is always left--something dim and inaccurate--but still something sufficient to preserve the taste for more. I am inclined to think that it is so with most readers.
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The property of manliness in a man is a great possession, but perhaps there is none that is less understood, which is more generally accorded where it does not exist, nor more frequently disallowed where it prevails.
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Such young men are often awkward, ungainly, and not yet formed in their gait; they straggle with their limbs, and are shy; words do not come to them with ease, when words are required, among any but their accustomed associates. Social meetings are periods of penance to them, and any appearance in public will unnerve them. They go much about alone, and blush when women speak to them. In truth, they are not as yet men, whatever the number may be of their years; and, as they are no longer boys, the world has found for them the ungraceful name of hobbledehoy.
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The tenth Muse who now governs the periodical press.
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Neither money nor position can atone to me for low birth.
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Of Dickens' style it is impossible to speak in praise. It is jerky, ungrammatical, and created by himself in defiance of rules... No young novelist should ever dare to imitate the style of Dickens.