No task is a long one but the task on which one dare not start. It becomes a nightmare.

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Let us beware of common folk, common sense, sentiment, inspiration, and the obvious.

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But what does it matter what reality is outside myself, so long as it has helped me to live, to feel that I am, and what I am?

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I am unable to understand how a man of honor could take a newspaper in his hands without a shudder of disgust.

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All which is beautiful and noble is the result of reason and calculation.

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The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvelous subjects. We are enveloped and steeped as though in an atmosphere of the marvelous; but we do not notice it.

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He who looks through an open window sees fewer things than he who looks through a closed window.

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I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy.

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The immense appetite we have for biography comes from a deep-seated sense of equality.

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As a small child, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life.

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