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The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.

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The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

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Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

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So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.

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The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

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Be honorable yourself if you wish to associate with honorable people.

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There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

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If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

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I do not have a psychiatrist and I do not want one, for the simple reason that if he listened to me long enough, he might become disturbed.

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The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand.

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