Music is the melody whose text is the world.
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The greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness.
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Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.
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The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.
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As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.
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There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.
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Money is human happiness in the abstract he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes himself utterly to money.
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Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.
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In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one's rights and double one's duties.
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If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the first sight of a letter from him.
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The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.
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If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.
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To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.
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A man's delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes.
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Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.
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We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.
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Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.
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Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of interruption. It is not only an interruption, but is also a disruption of thought.
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In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.
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Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.
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It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.
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Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.
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Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.
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Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes.
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Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.
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It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are.
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Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.
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Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
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A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.
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Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.
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