A man cannot be said to succeed in this life who does not satisfy one friend.
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A slight touch of friendly malice and amusement towards those we love keeps our affections for them from turning flat.
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All my life, as down an abyss without a bottom. I have been pouring van loads of information into that vacancy of oblivion I call my mind.
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Charming people live up to the very edge of their charm, and behave as outrageously as the world lets them.
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Don't laugh at a youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find a face of his own.
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Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.
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Happiness is a wine of the rarest vintage, and seems insipid to a vulgar taste.
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How awful to reflect that what people say of us is true!
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How can they say my life is not a success? Have I not for more than sixty years got enough to eat and escaped being eaten?
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How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares, were there a danger of their coming true!
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If you are losing your leisure, look out! You are losing your soul.
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If you are losing your leisure, look out; you may be losing your soul.
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If you want to be thought a liar, always tell the truth.
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It is the wretchedness of being rich that you have to live with rich people.
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It is through the cracks in our brains that ecstasy creeps in.
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It takes a great man to give sound advice tactfully, but a greater to accept it graciously.
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Only a generation of readers will span a generation of writers.
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Our names are labels, plainly printed on the bottled essence of our past behavior.
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People before the public live an imagined life in the thought of others, and flourish or feel faint as their self outside themselves grows bright or dwindles in that mirror.
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People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
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Solvency is entirely a matter of temperament and not of income.
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Thank Heaven, the sun has gone in, and I don't have to go out and enjoy it.
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The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists the circulation of the blood.
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The lusts and greeds of the body scandalize the Soul; but it has to come to heel.
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The newest books are those that never grow old.
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The old know what they want; the young are sad and bewildered.
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The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.
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The vitality of a new movement in Art must be gauged by the fury it arouses.
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Then I though of reading - the nice and subtle happiness of reading ... this joy not dulled by age, this polite and unpunishable vice, this selfish, serene, lifelong intoxication.
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There are few sorrows, however poignant, in which a good income is of no avail.
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There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want, and after that to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.
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There is more felicity on the far side of baldness than young men can possibly imagine.
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This nice and subtle happiness of reading, this joy not chilled by age, this polite and unpunished vice, this selfish, serene life-long intoxication
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Those who set out to serve both God and Mammon soon discover that there is no God.
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To suppose as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave as the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and stay sober.
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We need two kinds of acquaintances, one to complain to, while to the others we boast.
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What humbugs we are, who pretend to live for Beauty, and never see the Dawn!
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What I like in a good author is not what he says but what he whispers.
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What I like in a good author isn't what he says, but what he whispers.
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What is more mortifying than to feel that you have missed the plum for want of courage to shake the tree?
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What joy can the years bring half so sweet as the unhappiness they've taken away?
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What pursuit is more elegant than that of collecting the ignominies of our nature and transfixing them for show, each on the bright pin of a polished phrase?
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What's more enchanting than the voices of young people, when you can't hear what they say?
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When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter.
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