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So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

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Comedy is acting out optimism.

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There is nothing training cannot do. Nothing is above its reach. It can turn bad morals to good; it can destroy bad principles and recreate good ones; it can lift men to angelship.

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If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

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Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.

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The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other.

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Only free men can negotiate; prisoners cannot enter into contracts. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.

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The road to success leads through the valley of humility, and the path is up the ladder of patience and across the wide barren plains of perseverance. As yet, no short cut has ever been discovered.

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I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.

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There is neither happiness nor unhappiness in this world; there is only the comparison of one state with another. Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss. It is necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good life is to live.

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