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The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.
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The best is the enemy of the good.
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Never argue at the dinner table, for the one who is not hungry always gets the best of the argument.
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God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.
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It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.
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The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.
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The art of government is to make two-thirds of a nation pay all it possibly can pay for the benefit of the other third.
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In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.
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The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture, their amphitheaters, for wild beasts to fight in.
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Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable.
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Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game.
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We are rarely proud when we are alone.
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He who has not the spirit of this age, has all the misery of it.
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What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.
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When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.
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In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.
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Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.
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Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because nothing can be gained from him.
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There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.
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Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable.