quotes from classic

Coke and Blackstone hardly shed so much light into obscure spiritual places as the Hebrew prophets.

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As this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompasse...

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When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain's exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without -- oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command!

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Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic.

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Civilization has not ever been the brother of equality. Freedom was born among the wild eyries in the mountains; and barbarous tribes have she...

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"He's asleep, ain't he?" "With kings and counsellors," murmured I.

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At my years, and with my disposition, or rather, constitution, one gets to care less and less for everything except downright good feeling. Li...

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That nameless and infinitely delicate aroma of inexpressible tenderness and attentiveness which, in every refined and honorable attachment, is...

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Juxtaposition marries men.

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A whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.

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Don't use that foreign word "ideals." We have that excellent native word "lies."

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One of the qualities of liberty is that, as long as it is being striven after, it goes on expanding. Therefore, the man who stands in the midst of the struggle and says, "I have it," merely shows by doing so that he has just lost it.

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A minority may be right, and a majority is always wrong.

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Really to sin you have to be serious about it.

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One should never put on one's best trousers to go out to battle for freedom and truth.

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Do not use that foreign word "ideals." We have that excellent native word "lies."

more quotes from Henrik Johan Ibsen

A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.

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I'm afraid for all those who'll have the bread snatched from their mouths by these machines. What business has science and capitalism got, bringing all these new inventions into the works, before society has produced a generation educated up to using them!

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In that second it dawned on me that I had been living here for eight years with a strange man and had borne him three children.

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A marriage based on full confidence, based on complete and unqualified frankness on both sides; they are not keeping anything back; there's no deception underneath it all. If I might so put it, it's an agreement for the mutual forgiveness of sin.

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