- (A country where) the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.
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- A book or poem which has no pity in it had better not be written.
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- A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can you want?
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- A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
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- A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
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- A sentimentalist is simply one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.
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- A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
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- A true gentlemen is one who is never unintentionally rude.
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- All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
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- Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
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- Always! That is the dreadful word … it is a meaningless word, too.
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- Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.
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- As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
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- As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
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- At every single moment of one’s life, one is going to be no less than what one has been.
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- Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
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- By persistently remaining single a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation.
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- Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
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- Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
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- Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.
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- Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
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- Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes the biography.
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- Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
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- Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.
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- Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes.
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- Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
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- For he who lives more lives than one, more deaths than one must die.
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- Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.
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- He hasn’t an enemy in the world, and none of his friends like him.
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- I am not young enough to know everything.
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- I can believe anything, provided it is incredible.
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- I can resist everything except temptation.
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- I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.
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- I know not whether laws be right, Or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol Is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, A year whose days are long.
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- If England treats her criminals the way she has treated me, she doesn’t deserve to have any.
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- In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
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- It is a dangerous thing to reform anyone.
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- It is not the prisoners who need reformation, it is the prisons.
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- It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
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- I’ve put my genius into my life; I’ve only put my talent into my works.
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- Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.
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- Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.
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- Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question of nerves, and fibers, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself, and passion has its dreams.
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- Marriage is the one subject on which all women agree and all men disagree.
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- Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.
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- Men become old, but they never become good.
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- Men know life too early, women know life too late.
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- Men marry because they are tired, women because they are curious: both are disappointed.
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- My great mistake, the fault for which I can’t forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality.
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- Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern; one is apt to grow old-fashioned quite suddenly.
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- Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
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- One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
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- Only the shallow know themselves.
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- Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
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- Pessimist – one who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
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- Pleasure is the only thing to live for. Nothing ages like happiness.
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- Punctuality is the thief of time.
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- Relations are simply a tedious pack of people who haven’t got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.
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- The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
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- The best way to make children good is to make them happy.
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- The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read.
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- The old believe everything: the middle-aged suspect everything: the young know everything.
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- The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.
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- The only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.
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- The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.
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- The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.
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- The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
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- The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.
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- The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.
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- There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has the right to blame us.
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- There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.
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- There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.
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- There is no such thing as romance in our day, women have become too brilliant; nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman.
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- There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
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- Things are in their essence what we choose to make them. A thing is, according to the mode in which one looks at it.
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- This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back again.
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- To be on the alert is to live; to be lulled into security is to die.
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- To become the spectator of one’s own life is to escape the suffering of life.
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- To get into the best society nowadays, one has either to feed people, amuse people, or shock people.
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- To have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact, talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you.
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- To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.
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- To most of us the real life is the life we do not lead.
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- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
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- What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
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- When a love comes to an end, weaklings cry, efficient ones instantly find another love, and the wise already have one in reserve.
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- When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.
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- When I was young, I thought money was the most important thing in life. Now that I’m old – I know it is.
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- When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong.
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- When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.
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- Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.
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- Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.
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- Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
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- Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword.
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