It is said of a lonely man that he does not appreciate the life of society. This is like saying he hates hiking because he dislikes walking in thick forest on a dark night.
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Celebrity is the advantage of being known to people who we don't know, and who don't know us.
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How many fools does it take to make up a public?
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Pleasure may come from illusion, but happiness can come only of reality.
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Living is a sickness to which sleep provides relief every sixteen hours. It's a palliative. The remedy is death.
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We leave unmolested those who set the fire to the house, and prosecute those who sound the alarm.
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The most wasted of all days is that on which one has not laughed.
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The person of intellect is lost unless they unite with energy of character. When we have the lantern of Diogenese we must also have his staff.
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Education must have two foundations --morality as a support for virtue, prudence as a defense for self against the vices of others. By letting the balance incline to the side of morality, you only make dupes or martyrs; by letting it incline to the other, you make calculating egoists.
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A man is not necessarily intelligent because he has plenty of ideas, any more than he is a good general because he has plenty of soldiers.
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Once we have resolved only to see those who will treat us morally and virtuously, reasonably and truthfully, without treating conventions, vanities and ceremonials as anything other than props of polite society, we will have to live more or less on our own.
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An author is often obscure to the reader because they proceed from the thought to expression than like the reader from the expression to the thought.
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Scandal is an importunate wasp, against which we must make no movement unless we are quite sure that we can kill it; otherwise it will return to the attack more furious than ever.
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Change of fashion is the tax levied by the industry of the poor on the vanity of the rich.
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Nature never said to me: Do not be poor; still less did she say: Be rich; her cry to me was always: Be independent.
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If it were not for the government, we should have nothing to laugh at in France.
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Man arrives as a novice at each age of his life.
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There are well-dressed foolish ideas, just as there are will-dressed fools.
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Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures.
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No law reaches it, but all right-minded people observe it.
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Conviction is the conscience of the mind.
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There are certain times when public opinion is the worst of all opinions.
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The art of the parenthesis is one of the greatest secrets of eloquence in Society.
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People are governed with the head; kindness of heart is little use in chess.
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Pleasure can be supported by an illusion; but happiness rests upon truth.
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