Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. The very simplicity and nakedness of man's life in the primitive ages imply this advantage, at least, that they left him still but a sojourner in nature. To be awake is to be alive. Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. Every man is a builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them. Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
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Scotland: A land of meanness, sophistry and lust.
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What the horrors of war are, no one can imagine. They are not wounds and blood and fever, spotted and low, or dysentery, chronic and acute, cold and heat and famine. They are intoxication, drunken brutality, demoralization and disorder on the part of the inferior... jealousies, meanness, indifference, selfish brutality on the part of the superior.
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Absolutely anything is Necessary is a part of this dream, just as non-Knowledge is the Absolute Truth of Knowledge, which we will never find out itself because non-Knowledge cannot be known, just the same way as the Necessary has a truth as his opposite. No! I shout it loud and clear. All these monstrous tragedies through which mankind went through throughout its historical evolution are not necessary. They happened because of ignorance, stupidity, meanness, contempt, desire for power and any other causes due only to the fact that Man lost somewhere throughout millennia his Sacred Self.
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Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.
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There is no act of treachery or meanness of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no honour.
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With the introduction of agriculture mankind entered upon a long period of meanness, misery, and madness, from which they are only now being freed by the beneficent operation of the machine.
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The high-spirited man may indeed die, but he will not stoop to meanness. Fire, though it may be quenched, will not become cool.
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It has always seemed strange to me...The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success.
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Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.
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Cruelty to dumb animals is one of the distinguishing vices of low and base minds. Wherever it is found, it is a certain mark of ignorance and meanness; a mark which all the external advantages of wealth, splendour, and nobility, cannot obliterate. It is consistent neither with learning nor true civility.
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Matrimony is the union of meanness and martyrdom.
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The end never really justifies the meanness.
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What I must do is all that concerns me. This rule, equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.
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An infallible characteristic of meanness is cruelty. Men who have practiced tortures on animals without pity, relating them without shame, how can they still hold their heads among human beings?
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When you give a lesson in meanness to a critter or a person don't be surprised if they learn their lesson
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When you give a lesson in meanness to a critter or a person, don't be surprised if they learn their lesson
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