Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well
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A multitude of laws in a country is like a great number of physicians, a sign of weakness and malady.
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The first who was king was a fortunate soldier Who serves his country well has no need of ancestors.
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Dans ce pays-ci il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres. (In this country England it is thought well to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others. from Candide)
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I never married because there was no need. I have three pets at home which answer the same purpose as a husband. I have a dog which growls every morning, a parrot which swears all afternoon and a cat that comes home late at night.
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If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him.
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Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.
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People have declaimed against luxury for 2000 years, in verse and in prose, and people have always delighted in it.
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I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale.
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A novel is a mirror carried along a high road. At one moment it reflects to your vision the azure skies at another the mire of the puddles at your feet. And the man who carries this mirror in his pack will be accused by you of being immoral! His mirror shews the mire, and you blame the mirror! Rather blame that high road upon which the puddle lies, still more the inspector of roads who allows the water to gather and the puddle to form.
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I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it.
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If God did not exist it would be necessary to invent Him. But all nature cries aloud that He does exist that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on it.
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A fondness for satire indicates a mind pleased with irritating others for myself, I never could find amusement in killing flies.
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To hold a pen is to be at war.
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It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.
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God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh.
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One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.
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Could we see when and where we are to meet again, we would be more tender when we bid our friends goodbye.
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There is a vast difference between success at twenty-five and success at sixty. At sixty, nobody envies you. Instead, everybody rejoices generously, sincerely, in your good fortune.
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The wicked can have only accomplices, the voluptuous have companions in debauchery, self-seekers have associates, the politic assemble the factions, the typical idler has connections, princes have courtiers. Only the virtuous have friends.
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There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth.
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History is little else than a picture of human crimes and misfortunes.
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The feeble tremble before opinion, the foolish defy it, the wise judge it, the skillful direct it.
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Needless to say since Christ's expiation not one single Christian has been known to sin, or die.
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Weakness on both sides is, the motto of all quarrels.
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A bully is not reasonable - he is persuaded only by threats.
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What a wretched lot of old shrivelled creatures we shall be by-and-by. Never mind- the uglier we get in the eyes of others, the lovelier we shall be to each other that has always been my firm faith about friendship.
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Humanity needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit. A well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrated to research.
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History is only the pattern of silken slippers descending the stairs to the thunder of hobnailed boots climbing upward from below.
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Life is not easy for any of us, but what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted in something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.
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