quotes from classic

We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past, remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible.

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Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.

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The existence of any evil anywhere at any time absolutely ruins a total optimism.

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To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say.

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Never build your emotional life on the weaknesses of others.

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Prayer, among sane people, has never superseded practical efforts to secure the desired end.

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History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there.

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For gold is tried in the fire and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity.

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Each religion, by the help of more or less myth, which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny.

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Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.

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An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.

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A soul is but the last bubble of a long fermentation in the world.

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The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation.

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That fear first created the gods is perhaps as true as anything so brief could be on so great a subject.

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The philosophy of the common man is an old wife that gives him no pleasure, yet he cannot live without her, and resents any aspersions that strangers may cast on her character.

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It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss; volatile spirits prefer unhappiness.

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A conception not reducible to the small change of daily experience is like a currency not exchangeable for articles of consumption; it is not a symbol, but a fraud.

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Periods of tranquillity are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.

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Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds.

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It is always pleasant to be urged to do something on the ground that one can do it well.

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