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Science has explained nothing the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness.
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The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.
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Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.
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All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.
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Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.
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The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own.
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To his dog, every man is Napoleon hence the constant popularity of dogs.
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One of the great attractions of patriotism - it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what’s more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous.
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Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.
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After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
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It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.
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Sons have always a rebellious wish to be disillusioned by that which charmed their fathers.
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I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.
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Cynical realism is the intelligent man’s best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation.
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It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.
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Beauty is worse than wine, it intoxicates both the holder and beholder.
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The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly.
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Perhaps it’s good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he’s happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?
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Europe is so well gardened that it resembles a work of art, a scientific theory, a neat metaphysical system. Man has re-created Europe in his own image.
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We are all geniuses up to the age of ten.