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"There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Great is the difference betwixt a man's being frightened at, and humbled for his sins."
Author Name
Personal Development
"It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad."
Author Name
Personal Development
"To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved."
Author Name
Personal Development
"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."
Author Name
Personal Development
"It is a common enough case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal."
Author Name
Personal Development
"And they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Instead of being concerned that you have no office, be concerned to think how you may fit yourself for office. Instead of being concerned that you are not known, see to the (be?) worthy of being known."
Author Name
Personal Development
"A human being is only breath and shadow."
Author Name
Personal Development
"The secret of being a bore... is to tell everything."
Author Name
Personal Development
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"I would like to spare the time and effort of hack reviewers and, generally, persons who move their lips when reading."
Time
"There is only one school of literature - that of talent."
Talent
"Genius is an African who dreams up snow."
Dream
"It's a pity one can't imagine what one can't compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow."
Dream
"My darling, what a cat they have! Something perfectly stupendous. Siamese, in colour dark beige, or taupe, with chocolate paws and the tail the same. Moreover, his tail is comparatively short, so his croup has something of a little dog, or rather, a kangaroo, and that's its colour, too. And that special silkiness of short fur, and some very tender white tints on its folds, and wonderful clear-blue eyes, turning transparently green towards evening, and a pensive tenderness of its walk, a sort of heavenly circumspection of movement. An amazing, sacred animal, and so quiet " it's unclear what he is looking at with those eyes filled to the brim with sapphire water."
Nature
"And perhaps it was precisely because she knew nothing at all about chess that chess for her was not simply a parlor game or a pleasant pastime, but a mysterious art equal to all the recognized arts. She had never been in close contact with such people - there was no one to compare him with except those inspired eccentrics, musicians and poets whose image one knows as clearly and as vaguely as that of a Roman Emperor, an inquisitor or a comedy miser. Her memory contained a modest dimly lit gallery with a sequence of all the people who had in any way caught her fancy."
Art
"Logical reasoning may be a most convenient means of mental communication for covering short distances, but the curvature of the earth, alas, is reflected even in logic: an ideally rational progression of thought will finally bring you back to the point of departure where you return aware of the simplicity of genius, with a delightful sensation that you have embraced truth, while actually you have merely embraced your own self... anything you might term a deduction already exposes the flaw: logical development inexorably becomes an envelopment."
Philosophy
"A sunset, almost formidable in its splendor, would be lingering in the fully exposed sky. Among its imperceptibly changing amassments, one could pick out brightly stained structural details of celestial organisms, or glowing slits in dark banks, or flat, ethereal beaches that looked like mirages of desert islands. I did not know then (as I know perfectly well now) what to do with such things-how to get rid of them, how to transform them into something that can be turned over to the reader in printed characters to have him cope with the blessed shiver-and this inability enhanced my oppression."
Beauty
"We live in a stocking which is in the process of being turned inside out, without our ever knowing for sure to what phase of the process our moment of consciousness corresponds."
Philosophy
"If I am not master of my life, not sultan of my own being, then no man's logic and no man's ecstatic fits may force me to find less silly my impossibly silly position: that of God's slave; no, not his slave even, but just a match which is aimlessly struck and then blown out by some inquisitive child, the terror of his toys."
Philosophy
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