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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The player envies only the player, the poet envies only the poet.
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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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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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We can bear to be deprived of everything but our self-conceit.
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Death cancels everything but truth; and strips a man of everything but genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canonization. It makes the meanest of us sacred --it installs the poet in his immortality, and lifts him to the skies. Death is the greatest assayer of the sterling ore of talent. At his touch the dropsy particles fall off, the irritable, the personal, the gross, and mingle with the dust --the finer and more ethereal part mounts with winged spirit to watch over our latest memory, and protect our bones from insult. We consign the least worthy qualities to oblivion, and cherish the nobler and imperishable nature with double pride and fondness.
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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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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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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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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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Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room.
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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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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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When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.
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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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There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion.
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If mankind had wished for what is right, they might have had it long ago.
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Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts.
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Walk groundly, talk profoundly, drink roundly, sleep soundly
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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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It is better to be able neither to read nor write than to be able to do nothing else.
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Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge. Books are less often made use of as spectacles to look at nature with, than as blinds to keep out its strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes and indolent dispositions. The learned are mere literary drudges.
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If you think you can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory.
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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 scarcely hate anyone that we know.
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