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Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism.
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Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never.
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Works of imagination should be written in very plain language the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.
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A poet ought not to pick nature’s pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory.
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People of humor are always in some degree people of genius.
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No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor.
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The three great ends which a statesman ought to propose to himself in the government of a nation, are one, Security to possessors two, facility to acquirers and three, hope to all.
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He is the best physician who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.
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The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions - the little, soon forgotten charities of a kiss or a smile, a kind look or heartfelt compliment.
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I have seen great intolerance shown in support of tolerance.
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The three great ends which a statesman ought to propose to himself in the government of a nation, are one, Security to possessors two, facility to acquirers and three, hope to all.
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Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.
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Love is flower like Friendship is like a sheltering tree.
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Friendship is a sheltering tree.
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Sympathy constitutes friendship but in love there is a sort of antipathy, or opposing passion. Each strives to be the other, and both together make up one whole.
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In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in failure.
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That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.
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In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in failure.
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To most men experience is like the stern lights of a ship, which illuminate only the track it has passed.
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As I live and am a man, this is an unexaggerated tale - my dreams become the substances of my life.