In Paris today, millions of pounds of bread are sold daily, made during the previous night by those strange, half-naked beings one glimpses through cellar windows, whose wild-seeming cries floating out of those depths always makes a painful impression. In the morning, one sees these pale men, still white with flour, carrying a loaf under one arm, going off to rest and gather new strength to renew their hard and useful labor when night comes again. I have always highly esteemed the brave and humble workers who labor all night to produce those soft but crusty loaves that look more like cake than bread.
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I came upstairs into the world for I was born in a cellar.
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Theology is never any help it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.
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Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of a man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth? If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats: it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man; it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am. The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light.
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If you have a grateful heart (which is a miracle amongst you statesmen), show it by directing the bearer to the best wine in town, and pray let not this highest point of sacred friendship be performed slightly, but go about it with all due deliberation and care, as holy priests to sacrifice, or as discreet thieves to the wary performance of burglary and shop-lifting. Let your well-discerning palate (the best judge about you) travel from cellar to cellar and then from piece to piece till it has lighted on wine fit for its noble choice and my approbation.
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I came upstairs into the world; for I was born in a cellar.
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Friendship, 'the wine of life,' said Boswell, should, like a well-stocked cellar, be thus continually renewed. And Dr. Johnson added to this A man , Sir, should keep his friendships in constant repair .
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As against having beautiful workshops, studios, etc., one writes best in a cellar on a rainy day.
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He had a heart that could have held the empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar.
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Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine.
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Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.
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They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.
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