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"I suppose the test of one's decency is how much of a fight one can put up after one has stopped caring, and after one has found that one can never please the people they wanted to please."
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"A sweet soul will take you further than a sweet tongue."

"To see a man's true colors, tell him you're saving yourself for marriage. To see a woman's true colors, tell her you're poor."

"An evil person will have evil friends. A righteous person will have righteous friends. The company you keep is hidden treasure or masked demise."

"Personal discipline is a most powerful character quality and one worthy of dedicating your life to nurturing."

"It might not be about perfection. Rather, it may be that that which is imperfect is that which has the most character."

"Inside of all the makeup and the character and makeup, it's you, and I think that's what the audience is really interested in... you, how you're going to cope with the situation, the obstacles, the troubles that the writer put in front of you."

"Pride achieves almost nothing but destroys a lot."

"Character? I should have thought it needed a good deal of character to throw up a career after half an hour's meditation, because you saw in another way of living a more intense significance. And it required still more character never to regret the sudden step. I wondered if Abraham really had made a hash of life. Is to do what you most want, to live under the conditions that please you, in peace with yourself, to make a hash of life; and is it success to be an eminent surgeon with ten thousand a year and a beautiful wife? I suppose it depends on what meaning you attach to life, the claim which you acknowledge to society, and the claim of the individual. But again I held my tongue, for who am I to argue with a knight?"

"When you choose your friends, don't be short-changed by choosing personality over character."
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"The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper whether little or great, it belongs to Literature."


"As he stood there lost in reflection, Auclair thought he seemed more like a man revolving plans for a new struggle with fortune than one looking back upon a life of brilliant features. The Count had the bearing of a fencer when he takes up the foil; from his shoulders to his heels there was intention and direction. His carriage was his unconscious idea of himself, - it was an armour he put on when he took off his night-cap in the morning, and he wore it all day, at early mass, at his desk, on the march, at the Council, at his dinner-table. Even his enemies relied upon his strength."


"He knew he would always remember her, standing there with that expectant, forward-looking smile, enough to turn the future into summer."


"The land belongs to the future, Carl; that's the way it seems to me. How many of the names on the county clerk's plat will be there in fifty years? I might as well try to will the sunset over there to my brother's children. We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it-for a little while."


"As I went back alone over that familiar road, I could almost believe that a boy and girl ran along beside me, as our shadows used to do, laughing and whispering to each other in the grass."


"A crimson fire that vanquishes the stars;A pungent odor from the dusty sage;A sudden stirring of the huddled herds;A breaking of the distant table-landsThrough purple mists ascending, and the flareOf water ditches silver in the light;A swift, bright lance hurled low across the world;A sudden sickness for the hills of home."
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