The higher the moral tone, the more suspect the speaker.
More quotes from Mason Cooley
Money is to my social existence what health is to my body.
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Minds will wander even during the Last Judgment.
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Most people regard getting their way as a matter of simple justice.
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What lies behind appearance is usually another appearance.
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The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has more threat than comfort.
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Logic teaches rules for presentation, not thinking.
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The higher the moral tone, the more suspect the speaker.
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When a man bores a woman, she complains. When a woman bores a man, he ignores her.
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An omnipotent God is the only being with no reason to lie.
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Documents create a paper reality we call proof.
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Friends are sometimes boring, but enemies never.
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We are more tied to our faults than to our virtues.
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Rescue someone unwilling to look after himself, and he will cling to you like a dangerous illness.
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The beloved is the ultimate fetish.
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People believe that photographs are true and therefore cannot be art.
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Thinking about the universe has now been handed over to specialists. The rest of us merely read about it.
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Why do we never expect dull people to be rascals?
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Worried about being a dull fellow? You might develop your talent for being irritating.
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There are different rules for reading, for thinking, and for talking. Writing blends all three of them.
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Lying just for the fun of it is either art or pathology.
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Romance is tempestuous. Love is calm.
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Listening to people keeps them entertained.
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A real idea keeps changing and appears in many places.
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Magic trick: to make people disappear, ask them to fulfill their promises.
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Never try to leap from a standstill.
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Young men preen. Old men scheme.
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My mind is led astray by every faint rustle.
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Poor but happy is not a phrase invented by a poor person.
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‘Be faithful to your roots’ is the liberal version of ‘Stay in your ghetto.’
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The wisdom of age: don’t stop walking.
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Cats are inquisitive, but hate to admit it.
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Death is frightening, and so is Eternal Life.
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Kafka: cries of helplessness in twenty powerful volumes.
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Money: power at its most liquid.
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The gods are watching, but idly, yawning.
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In the game of love, the losers are more celebrated than the winners.
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The shades of respectability begin to close about the greying head.
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The novel avoids the sublime and seeks out the interesting.
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Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.
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Every literary critic believes he will outwit history and have the last word.
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Orgasm: the genitals sneezing.
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Promiscuity is like never reading past the first page. Monogamy is like reading the same book over and over.
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Seeing my malevolent face in the mirror, my benevolent soul shrinks back.
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The passions are the same in every conflict, large or small.
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In the street, the gaze of desire is furtive or menacing.
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While there’s life, there’s fear.
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Fail, and your friends feel superior. Succeed, and they feel resentful.
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If we think about the obvious long enough, it dissolves.
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Few artists can afford artistic temperament.
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Opportunity knocks, but doesn’t always answer to its name.
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Creativity makes a leap, then looks to see where it is.
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In every death, a busy world comes to an end.
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Old and young disbelieve one another’s truths.
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My parents wanted me to solace them for sorrows they denied having had.
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Other people’s beliefs may be myths, but not mine.
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The man of sensibility is too busy talking about his feelings to have time for good deeds.
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Middle age went by while I was mourning for my lost youth.
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Critic’s delight: scolding the Mighty Dead.
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Old age: I fall asleep during the funerals of my friends.
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After my spectacular failures, I could not be satisfied with an ordinary success.
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My passions have never jumped out of the fireplace and set fire to the carpet.
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Outside books, we avoid colorful characters.
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I did not know I was in my prime until afterwards.
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Philosophy likes to keen common sense on the run.
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Mind and body obstruct one another’s pleasures.
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Imagination has rules, but we can only guess what they are.
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Think carefully before asking for justice. Mercy might be safer.
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Conscious thought is the tidying up at the end.
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Fulfillment is often more trouble than it is worth.
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Many gloat over their own troubles.
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Self-reform is the only kind that works.
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To confer dignity, forgive. To express contempt, forget.
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First literature came to refer only to itself, the literary theory.
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Travelers never think that they are the foreigners.
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Human society sustains itself by transforming nature into garbage.
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The power of lying is much less than the power of what is not to be discussed.
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Rage is exciting, but leaves me confused and exhausted.
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General statements omit what we really want to know. Example: some horses run faster than others.
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The beginning of self-knowledge: recognizing that your motives are the same as other people’s.
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Reputation runs behind the current state of affairs.
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Melancholy is as seductive as Ecstasy.
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The ravaged face in the mirror hides the enchanting youth that is the real me.
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Innocence is thought charming because it offers delightful possibilities for exploitation.
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People who abhor solitude may abhor company almost as much.
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The discontented believe that their regrets are about the past.
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Don’t stare into a mirror when you are trying to solve a problem.
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A blunt statement can be as false as any other.
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Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation.
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Three meals plus bedtime make four sure blessings a day.
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The body has a mind of its own.
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The horse stares at its captor, barely remembering the free kicks of youth.
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Innocence: I am only stepping on your face because it lies in my path.
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Journalism never admits that nothing much is happening.
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Without civilization, we would not turn into animals, but vegetables.
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Observe decorum, and it will open a path to morality.
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Children now expect their parents to audition for approval.
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Flattery and insults raise the same question: What do you want?
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Fantasy mirrors desire. Imagination reshapes it.
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Moo may represent an idea, but only the cow knows.
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Art seduces, but does not exploit.
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Living alone makes it harder to find someone to blame.
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Forgiveness is like faith. You have to keep reviving it.
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Mistakes are the only universal form of originality.
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Bad faith likes discourse on friendship and loyalty.
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Unlike the actual, the fictional explains itself.
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After an argument, silence may mean acceptance or the continuation of resistance by other means.
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City people make most of the fuss about the charms of country life.
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Fastidious taste makes enjoyment a struggle.
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I know that I am what I am. But I am not sure what I am.
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To be successful be ahead of your time, but only a little.
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Well-behaved: he always speaks as if his mother might be listening.
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Malice is always authentic and sincere.
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Eternity eludes us, even as a thought.
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Self-hatred and self-love are equally self-centered.
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While we are reading, we are all Don Quixote.
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Dancing and running shake up the chemistry of happiness.
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Children use all their wiles to get their way with adults. Adults do the same with children.
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Cynicism is full of naive disappointments.
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A sense of blessedness comes from a change of heart, not from more blessings.
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Faith moves mountains, but you have to keep pushing while you are praying.
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Hypocrisy is the outside of cynicism.
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Writers mean more than they say and say more than they mean.
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Preserving tradition has become a nice hobby, like stamp collecting.
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A great reader seldom recognizes his solitude.
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Compassion brings us to a stop, and for a moment we rise above ourselves.
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Even cats grow lonely and anxious.
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The time I kill is killing me.
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Events are called inevitable only after they have occurred.
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The real secrets are not the ones I tell.
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Ideology has shaped the very sofa on which I sit.
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Language is the friendliest of the things from which we cannot escape.
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Reality is the name we give to our disappointments.
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Young poets bewail the passing of love; old poets, the passing of time. There is surprisingly little difference.
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Good parties create a temporary youthfulness.
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Affection reproaches, but does not denounce.
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Even the most fickle are faithful to a few bad habits.
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An academic dialect is perfected when its terms are hard to understand and refer only to one another.
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Rereading, we find a new book.
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The aim of literary ambition is to demonstrate one’s greatness of soul.
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To understand someone, find out how he spends his money.
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Few friendships could survive the moodiness of love affairs.
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Complainers change their complaints, but they never reduce the amount of time spent in complaining.
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At sixty, I know little more about wisdom than I did at thirty, but I know a great deal more about folly.
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If you are going to break a Law of Art, make the crime interesting.
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My thought has been shaped by books; my desires by pictures.
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If the world would apologize, I might consider a reconciliation.
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The passion for money is never fickle.
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Families in which nothing is ever discussed usually have a lot not to discuss.
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A blocked path also offers guidance.
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If success is a habit, it is a hard one to acquire.
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Staid middle age loves the hurricane passions of opera.
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Sloth, not ill-will, makes me unjust.
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Fears and lies intensify consciousness.
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It is possible to interpret without observing, but not to observe without interpreting.
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Women encourage men to be childish, then scold them.
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The laughter of the aphorism is sometimes triumphant, but seldom carefree.
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Logic and fact keep interfering with the easy flow of conversation.
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No chaos, no creation. Evidence: the kitchen at mealtime.
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The sage belongs to the same obsolete repertory as the virtuous maiden and the enlightened monarch.
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In love, we worry more about the meaning of silences than the meaning of words.
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Romantics consider common sense vulgar.
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To understand a literary style, consider what it omits.
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I see what you mean, but I do not think what you think.
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Only the broken-hearted know the truth about love.
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In psychoanalysis, only the fee is exactly what it seems to be.
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I love you is the inscription on Pandora’s box.
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Humor does not rescue us from unhappiness, but enables us to move back from it a little.
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Hatred of the mother is familiar, but the mother’s hatred still comes as a surprise.
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Reason enables us to get around in the world of ideas, but cannot prescribe our thoughts.
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If modesty disappeared, so would exhibitionism.
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I’m being treated like a sex object, cried the lady. No matter. I will take care of it, said Time soothingly.
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Often, when I want to consult my impulses, I cannot find them.
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Stated clearly enough, an idea may cancel itself out.
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Some loves are like a vice that has ceased to give pleasure.
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Excuses change nothing, but make everyone feel better.
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If beggars do not hate the rest of us, they are even more abject than I had imagined.
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The educated do not share a common body of information, but a common state of mind.
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I read less and less. I have not forgiven books for their failure to tell me the truth and make me happy.
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If I play hard to get, soon the phone stops ringing altogether.
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For many, immaturity is an ideal, not a defect.
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Totem poles and wooden masks no longer suggest tribal villages but fashionable drawing rooms in New York and Paris.
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Never ask a bore a question.
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Irony regards every simple truth as a challenge.
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Most reputations are not ruined but forgotten.
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We are prepared for insults, but compliments leave us baffled.
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Expensive advertising courts us with hints and images. The ordinary kind merely says, Buy.
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Amazing that the human race has taken enough time out from thinking about food or sex to create the arts and sciences.
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Hatred observes with more care than love does.
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Lust and greed are more gullible than innocence.
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When I prayed for success, I forgot to ask for sound sleep and good digestion.
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Even boredom has its crises.
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Procrastination makes easy things hard, hard things harder.
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When sages commend excess, Desire is sick.
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Cruelty is softened by fear, not pity.
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A happy arrangement: many people prefer cats to other people, and many cats prefer people to other cats.
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Every day begins with an act of courage and hope: getting out of bed.
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Who would not give up wit for power and beauty?
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Love begins with an image; lust with a sensation.
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I have learned to keep to myself how exceptional I am.
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If you call failures experiments, you can put them in your resume and claim them as achievements.
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Folly always knows the answer.
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As equality increases, so does the number of people struggling for predominance.
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Cure for an obsession: get another one.
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Ultimately, blind faith is the only kind.
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The man in the street is always a stranger.
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The only peace is being out of earshot.
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Kindness eases everything almost as much as money does.
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Sincerity: willingness to spend one’s own money.
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The lonely become either thoughtful or empty.
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Consciousness is our only reprieve from Time.
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Talk about yourself as much as you like, but do not expect others to listen.
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Taste refers to the past, imagination to the future.
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Office politics are bloody-minded, but weak on content.
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In bridge clubs and in councils of state, the passions are the same.
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