O rose, who dares to name thee? No longer roseate now, nor soft, nor sweet, But pale, and hard, and dry, as stubblewheat,-- Kept seven years in a drawer, thy titles shame thee.
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The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventhday Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/Four Square Gospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor whosees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.
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You are outside life, you are above life, you have miseries which the ordinary man does not know, you exceed the normal level, and it is for this that men refuse to forgive you, you poison their peace of mind, you undermine their stability. You have irrepressible pains whose essence is to be inadaptable to any known state, indescribable in words. You have repeated and shifting pains, incurable pains, pains beyond imagining, pains which are neither of the body nor of the soul, but which partake of both. And I share your suffering, and I ask you: who dares to ration our relief? We are not going to kill ourselves just yet. In the meantime, leave us the hell alone.
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There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.
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There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell the country for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press. We are the tools and vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.
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That's a valiant flea that dares eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion.
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Fortune sides with him who dares.
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None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.
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He who will not reason is the bigot; he who cannot is a fool; he who dares not is a slave.
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Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers -- such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a fatade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.
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A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
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Give me the critic bred in Nature's school, who neither talks by rote, nor thinks by rule; who feeling's honest dictates still obeys, and dares, without a precedent, to praise.
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I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.
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The Artist, the free-flyer, the person that dares to be mad can always go back to that madness. You cannot corner that person. That person has an instrument, has a piece of paper, has a pencil, has two dollars worth of dime store paint, has some sand on the beach... That person can always go for Truth. You cannot corner that person. You can lock them in solitary and they'll scratch it on the wall, and if you cut off their hands, they will scratch it in their mind.
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Who bravely dares must sometimes risk a fall.
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The human heart dares not stay away too long from that which hurt it most. There is a return journey to anguish that few of us are released from making.
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He who will not reason is a bigot he who cannot is a fool and he who dares not is a slave.
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He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
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A playwright must be his own audience. A novelist may lose his readers for a few pages; a playwright never dares lose his audience for a minute.
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Courage is always greatest when blended with meekness; intellectual ability is most admired when it sparkles in the setting of modest self-distrust; and never does the human soul appear so strong as when it foregoes revenge and dares to forgive any injury.
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A brave man is a man who dares to look the Devil in the face and tell him he is a Devil.
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Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.
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Never does the human soul appear so strong and noble as when it forgoes revenge and dares to forgive injury.
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Who dares deny that this is true: The whole is more than all its parts? A whole love than divided love, Or than half love from fifty hearts? Yet who dare either this deny: The part is more than is the whole? That treasures halved with one dear love Are more than double to the soul?
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Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself and dares to become involved with experimenting with his own life.
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A man is as good as he has to be, and a woman as bad as she dares.
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He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, That dares not put it to the touch, To gain or lose it all.
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Never does the human soul appear so strong and noble as when it foregoes revenge and dares to forgive an injury.
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If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out of it but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow enobled and no-one dares criticize it.
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Every one speaks well of his own heart, but no one dares speak well of his own mind.
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