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I hate a stupid man who can't talk to me, and I hate a clever man who talks me down. I don’t like a man who is too lazy to make any effort to shine; but I particularly dislike the man who is always striving for effect. I abominate a humble man, but yet I love to perceive that a man acknowledges the superiority of my sex, and youth and all that kind of thing. . . A man who would tell me that I am pretty, unless he is over seventy, ought to be kicked out of the room. But a man who can't show me that he thinks me so without saying a word about it, is a lout.
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That I can read and be happy while I am reading, is a great blessing.
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The true picture of life as it is, if it could be adequately painted, would show men what they are, and how they might rise, not, indeed to perfection, but one step first, and then another on the ladder.
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The idea of putting old Browborough into prison for conduct which habit had made second nature to a large proportion of the House was distressing to Members of Parliament generally.
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Here in England the welfare of the State depends on the conduct of our aristocracy.
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I never believe anything that a lawyer says when he has a wig on his head and a fee in his hand. I prepare myself beforehand to regard it all as mere words, supplied at so much the thousand. I know he'll say whatever he thinks most likely to forward his own views.
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Fortune favors the brave; and the world certainly gives the most credit to those who are able to give an unlimited credit to themselves.
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A man's love, till it has been chastened and fastened by the feeling of duty which marriage brings with it, is instigated mainly by the difficulty of pursuit.
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An author must be nothing if he do not love truth; a barrister must be nothing if he do.
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The habit of writing clearly soon comes to the writer who is a severe critic to himself.
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Many people talk much, and then very many people talk very much more.
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A pleasant letter I hold to be the pleasantest thing that this world has to give.
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What is there that money will not do?
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There is no human bliss equal to twelve hours of work with only six hours in which to do it.
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A man can't do what he likes with his coverts.
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The natural man will probably be manly. The affected man cannot be so.
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The Church of England is the only church in the world that interferes neither with your politics nor your religion.
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The grace and beauty of life will be clean gone when we all become useful men.
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We cannot bring ourselves to believe it possible that a foreigner should in any respect be wiser than ourselves. If any such point out to us our follies, we at once claim those follies as the special evidence of our wisdom.
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Of all hatreds that the world produces, a wife's hatred for her husband, when she does hate him, is the strongest.
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A Minister can always give a reason; and, if he be clever, he can generally when doing so punish the man who asks for it. The punishing of an influential enemy is an indiscretion; but an obscure questioner may often be crushed with good effect.
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Words spoken cannot be recalled, and many a man and many a woman who has spoken a word at once regretted, are far too proud to express that regret.
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Mr Palliser was one of those politicians in possessing whom England has perhaps more reason to be proud than of any other of her resources, and who, as a body, give to her that exquisite combination of conservatism and progress which is her present strength and best security for the future.
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No other American city is so intensely American as New York.