Few things tend more to alienate friendship than a want of punctuality in our engagements. I have known the breach of a promise to dine or sup to break up more than one intimacy.
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Give me the clear blue sky above my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to dinner - and then to thinking! It is hard if I cannot start some game on these lone heaths.
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A Whig is properly what is called a Trimmer -- that is, a coward to both sides of the question, who dare not be a knave nor an honest man, but is a sort of whiffing, shuffling, cunning, silly, contemptible, unmeaning negation of the two.
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To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it.
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The world judge of men by their ability in their profession, and we judge of ourselves by the same test: for it is on that on which our success in life depends.
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It is not fit that every man should travel; it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.
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Hope is the best possession. None are completely wretched but those who are without hope. Few are reduced so low as that.
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The player envies only the player, the poet envies only the poet.
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A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. It is a bugbear to the imagination, and, though we do not believe in it, it still haunts our apprehensions.
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A hair in the head is worth two in the brush.
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If the schemes of Utopians could be realized, the tone of society would be changed from what it is, into a sort of insipid high life. There could be no fine tragedies written; nor would there be any pleasure in seeing them. We tend to this conclusion already with the progress of civilization.
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There is a secret pride in every human heart that revolts at tyranny. You may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you.
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The least pain in our little finger gives us more concern and uneasiness than the destruction of millions of our fellow-beings.
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When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.
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Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the substance is gone - but part, while you can part friends. Bury the carcass of friendship: it is not worth embalming.
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Walk groundly, talk profoundly, drink roundly, sleep soundly
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Envy among other ingredients has a mixture of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good-fortune.
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Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts.
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There is no one thoroughly despicable. We cannot descend much lower than an idiot; and an idiot has some advantages over a wise man.
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If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago.
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If you think you can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory.
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Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room.
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We can scarcely hate anyone that we know.
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It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing else.
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People of genius do not excel in any profession because they work in it, they work in it because they excel.
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The person whose doors I enter with most pleasure, and quit with most regret, never did me the smallest favor.
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We can bear to be deprived of everything but our self-conceit.
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There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion.
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Grace has been defined as the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul.
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We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects.
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