But probably that's the way of the world - when we have finally learned something we're too old to apply it - and so it goes, wave after wave, generation after generation. No one learns anything at all from anyone else.

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It's only terrible to have nothing to wait for.

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Keep things at arm's length. If you let anything come too near you want to hold on to it. And there is nothing a man can hold on to.

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No matter how improbable an assertion is, if it is made with enough assurance it has an affect. Erich Maria Remarque

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Life did not intend to make us perfect. Whoever is perfect belongs in a museum.

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Modesty and conscientiousness receive their reward only in novels. In life they are exploited and then shoved aside.

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With blinded eyes I stared at the sky, this grey, endless sky of a crazy god, who had made life and death for his amusement.

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Sometimes I used to think that one day i should wake up, and all that had been would be over. forgotten, sunk, drowned. Nothing was sure - not even memory.

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For a moment I had a strange intuition that just this, and in a real, profound sense, is life; and perhaps happiness even - love with a mixture of sadness, reverence, and silent knowledge.

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Mirrors are there when we are and yet they never give anything back to us but our own image. Never, never shall we know what they are when they are alone or what is behind them.

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