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A Caterpillar Who Seeks To Know Himself Would Never Become A Butterfly

-Andre Gide

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A Caterpillar Who Seeks

Andre Gide

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A Caterpillar Who Seeks To Know Himself Would Never Become A Butterfly

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It Is With Fine Sentiments That Bad Literature Is Made. Descend To The Bottom Of The Well If You Wish To See The Stars.

Solitude Is Bearable Only With God.

The Thing I Am Most Aware Of Is My Limits. And This Is Natural; For I Never, Or Almost Never, Occupy The Middle Of My Cage; My Whole Being Surges Toward The Bars.

To Know How To Free Oneself Is Nothing; The Arduous Thing Is To Know What To Do With One's Freedom.

It Is Often So: The Harder It Is To Hear, The More A Truth Is Worth Saying.

Of Some Forty Families I Have Been Able To Observe, I Know Hardly Four In Which The Parents Do Not Act In Such A Way That Nothing Would Be More Desirable For The Child Than To Escape Their Influence.

There's A Law In Life: Whenever A Door Closes, A New One Will Open.

One Completely Overcomes Only What One Assimilates.

I Intend To Bring You Strength, Joy, Courage, Perspicacity, Defiance.

Every Instant Of Our Lives Is Essentially Irreplaceable: You Must Know This In Order To Concentrate On Life.

The Nationalist Has A Broad Hatred And A Narrow Love.

An Opinion, Though It Is Original, Does Not Necessarily Differ From The Accepted Opinion; The Important Thing Is That It Does Not Try To Conform To It.

God Lies Ahead. I Convince Myself And Constantly Repeat To Myself That: He Depends On Us. It Is Through Us That God Is Achieved.

He Who Makes Great Demands Upon Himself Is Naturally Inclined To Make Great Demands On Others.

Don't Think That Your Truth Could Be Found By Someone Else.

The Capacity To Get Free Is Nothing; The Capacity To Be Free Is The Task.

The Reasons That Drive Me To Write Are Many And The Most Important Are The Most Secret, I Think. Perhaps Most Of All This: To Put Something Out Of Death's Reach.

Nothing Blocks Happiness Like Happiness Remembered.

It Is Easier To Lead Men To Combat, Stirring Up Their Passion, Than To Restrain Them And Direct Them Toward The Patient Labors Of Peace.

Man's First And Greatest Victory Must Be Won Against The Gods.

Greatest Victory

The Color Of Truth Is Gray.

The Individual Man Tries To Escape The Race. And As Soon As He Ceases To Represent The Race, He Represents Man.

Sadness Is Almost Never Anything But A Form Of Fatigue.

It Is Not Always By Plugging Away At A Difficulty And Sticking To It That One Overcomes It; Often It Is By Working On The One Next To It. Some Things And Some People Have To Be Approached Obliquely, At An Angle.

There Are Very Few Monsters Who Warrant The Fear We Have Of Them.

The Work Of Art Is The Exaggeration Of An Idea.

Humanity Cherishes Its Swaddling Clothes; But It Shall Not Grow Up Unless It Can Free Itself From Them. Turning Down His Mother's Breast Does Not Make The Weaned Child Ungrateful. ... Rise Up Naked, Valiant; Make The Sheaths Crack; Push Aside The Stakes; To Grow Straight You Need No More Than The Thrust Of Your Sap And The Call Of The Sun.

You Have To Let Other People Be Right' Was His Answer To Their Insults. 'it Consoles Them For Not Being Anything Else.

Atheism. There Is Not A Single Exalting And Emancipating Influence That Does Not In Turn Become Inhibitory.

The Most Beautiful Things Are Those That Madness Prompts And Reason Writes.

It Is Now, And In This World, That We Must Live.

True Eloquence Forgoes Eloquence.

Every Perfect Action Is Accompanied By Pleasure. By That You Can Tell What You Ought To Do.

The Wise Man Is He Who Constantly Wonders Afresh.

Know That Joy Is Rarer, More Difficult, And More Beautiful Than Sadness. Once You Make This All-important Discovery, You Must Embrace Joy As A Moral Obligation.

We Call "happiness" A Certain Set Of Circumstances That Makes Joy Possible. But We Call Joy That State Of Mind And Emotions That Needs Nothing To Feel Happy.

Work And Struggle And Never Accept An Evil That You Can Change.

I Owe Much To My Friends; But, All Things Considered, It Strikes Me That I Owe Even More To My Enemies. The Real Person Springs Life Under A Sting Even Better Than Under A Caress.

Nothing Excellent Can Be Done Without Leisure.

The Miser Puts His Gold Pieces Into A Coffer; But As Soon As The Coffer Is Closed, It Is As If It Were Empty.

What Would There Be In A Story Of Happiness? Only What Prepares It, Only What Destroys It Can Be Told.

Enduring Fame Is Promised Only To Those Writers Who Can Offer To Successive Generations A Substance Constantly Renewed; For Every Generation Arrives Upon The Scene With Its Own Particular Hunger.

The True Hypocrite Is The One Who Ceases To Perceive His Deception, The One Who Lies With Sincerity.

Families, I Hate You! Shut-in Homes, Closed Doors, Jealous Possessors Of Happiness

Man Is Extraordinarily Clever In Preventing Himself From Being Happy; It Would Seem That The Less Able He Is To Endure Misfortune The More Apt He Is To Attach Himself To It.

It Is Good To Follow One's Own Bent, So Long As It Leads Upward.

Do Not Think Your Truth Can Be Found By Anyone Else.

It Is With Noble Sentiments That Bad Literature Gets Written.

There Is A Law In Life: When One Door Closes To Us Another One Opens.

The Finest Virtues Can Become Deformed With Age. The Precise Mind Becomes Finicky; The Thrifty Man, Miserly; The Cautious Man, Timorous; The Man Of Imagination, Fanciful. Even Perseverance Ends Up In A Sort Of Stupidity. Just As, On The Other Hand, Being Too Willing To Understand Too Many Opinions, Too Diverse Ways Of Seeing, Constancy Is Lost And The Mind Goes Astray In A Restless Fickleness.

No Theory Is Good Unless It Permits, Not Rest, But The Greatest Work. No Theory Is Good Except On Condition That One Use It To Go On Beyond.

Drunkenness Is Never Anything But A Substitute For Happiness.

The Most Subtle Art, The Strongest And Deepest Art - Supreme Art - Is The One That Does Not At First Allow Itself To Be Recognized.

Throw Away My Book: You Must Understand That It Represents Only One Of A Thousand Attitudes. You Must Find Your Own. If Someone Else Could Have Done Something As Well As You, Don’t Do It. If Someone Else Could Have Said Something As Well As You, Don’t Say It—or Written Something As Well As You, Don’t Write It. Grow Fond Only Of That Which You Can Find Nowhere But In Yourself, And Create Out Of Yourself, Impatiently Or Patiently, Ah! That Most Irreplaceable Of Beings.

The Sole Art That Suits Me Is That Which, Rising From Unrest, Tends Toward Serenity.

Fish Die Belly Upward, And Rise To The Surface. Its Their Way Of Falling.

Nothing Is Good For Everyone, But Only Relatively To Some People.

Each Of Us Really Understands In Others Only Those Feelings He Is Capable Of Producing Himself.

If A Young Writer Can Refrain From Writing, He Shouldn’t Hesitate To Do So.

There Is No Prejudice That The Work Of Art Does Not Finally Overcome.

When I Cease To Be Indignant I Will Have Begun My Old Age.

We Live Counterfeit Lives In Order To Resemble The Idea We First Had Of Ourselves.

At Times Is It Seems That I Am Living My Life Backward, And That At The Approach Of Old Age My Real Youth Will Begin. My Soul Was Born Covered With Wrinkles. Wrinkles My Ancestors And Parents Most Assiduously Put There And That I Had The Greatest Trouble Removing.

The Bad Novelist Constructs His Characters; He Directs Them And Makes Them Speak. The True Novelist Listens To Them And Watches Them Act; He Hears Their Voices Even Before He Knows Them.

The Most Decisive Actions Of Life Are Most Often Unconsidered Actions.

I Advise The Young To Tell Themselves Constantly That Most Often It Is Up To Them Alone.

The Belief That Becomes Truth For Me... Is That Which Allows Me The Best Use Of My Strength, The Best Means Of Putting My Virtues Into Action.

Oh, Would That My Mind Could Let Fall Its Dead Ideas, As The Tree Does Its Withered Leaves!

If Life Were Organized, There Would Be No Need For Art.

Great Minds Tend Toward Banality. It Is The Noblest Effort Of Individualism. But It Implies A Sort Of Modesty, Which Is So Rare That It Is Scarcely Found Except In The Greatest, Or In Beggars.

When Intelligent People Pride Themselves On Not Understanding, It Is Quite Natural They Should Succeed Better Than Fools.

Great Authors Are Admirable In This Respect: In Every Generation They Make For Disagreement. Through Them We Become Aware Of Our Differences.

What Eludes Logic Is The Most Precious Element In Us, And One Can Draw Nothing From A Syllogism That The Mind Has Not Put There In Advance.

It Is Better To Be Hated For What You Are Than To Be Loved For Something You Are Not.

It Would Be Wisest Not To Worry Too Much About The Sterile Periods. They Ventilate The Subject And Instill Into It The Reality Of Daily Life.

Society Knows Perfectly Well How To Kill A Man And Has Methods More Subtle Than Death

Not Everyone Can Be An Orphan.

The Abominable Effort To Take One’s Sins With One To Paradise.

In Order To Judge Properly, One Must Get Away Somewhat From What One Is Judging, After Having Loved It. This Is True Of Countries, Of Persons, And Of Oneself.

Only Fools Don't Contradict Themselves

I Find Just As Much Profit In Cultivating My Hates As My Loves.

Then You Think That One Can Keep A Hopeless Love In One's Heart For So Long As That?...and That Life Can Breathe Upon It Every Day, Without Extinguishing It?

Sadness Is A State Of Sin.

Believe In Your Strength And Your Vision. Learn To Repeat To Yourself, 'it All Depends On Me'.

It Seems To Me That Had I Not Known Dostoevsky Or Nietzsche Or Freud Or X Or Z, I Should Have Thought Just As I Did, And That I Found In Them Rather An Authorization Than An Awakening. Above All, They Taught Me To Cease Doubting, To Cease Fearing My Thoughts, And To Let Those Thoughts Lead Me To Those Lands That Were Not Uninhabitable Because After All I Found Them Already There .

The Individual Person Is More Interesting Than People In General; He And Not They Is The One Whom God Created In His Image.

By The Time A Philospher Answers A Question Weve Usually Forgotten What Was Asked.

It Is Only Through Restraint That Man Can Manage Not To Suppress Himself.

Envying Another Man's Happiness Is Madness; You Wouldn't Know What To Do With It If You Had It.

Art Begins With Resistance - At The Point Where Resistance Is Overcome. No Human Masterpiece Has Ever Been Created Without Great Labor.

Generally Among Intelligent People Are Found Nothing But Paralytics And Among Men Of Action Nothing But Fools.

It Is The Special Quality Of Love Not To Be Able To Remain Stationary, To Be Obliged To Increase Under Pain Of Diminishing.

Happy Valentines Day

With Each Book You Write You Should Lose The Admirers You Gained With The Previous One.

Know Thyself. A Maxim As Pernicious As It Is Ugly. Whoever Studies Himself Arrest His Own Development. A Caterpillar Who Seeks To Know Himself Would Never Become A Butterfly.

Wisdom Comes Not From Reason But From Love.

Our Deeds Attach Themselves To Us Like The Flame To Phosphorus. They Constitute Our Brilliance, To Be Sure, But Only In So Far As They Consume Us.

Let Every Emotion Be Capable Becoming An Intoxication To You. If What You Eat Fails To Make You Drunk, It Is Because You Are Not Hungry Enough.

God Depends On Us. It Is Through Us That God Is Achieved.

There Is No Work Of Art That Is Without Short Cuts.

An Experience Teaches Only The Good Observer; But Far From Seeking A Lesson In It, Everyone Looks For An Argument In Experience, And Everyone Interprets The Conclusion In His Own Way.

Long Only For What You Have.

The Very Act Of Sacrifice Magnifies The One Who Sacrifices Himself To The Point Where His Sacrifice Is Much More Costly To Humanity Than Would Have Been The Loss Of Those For Whom He Is Sacrificing Himself. But In His Abnegation Lies The Secret Of His Grandeur.

Welcome Anything That Comes To You, But Do Not Long For Anything Else.

If Only We Could Lean Over The Soul We Love And See As In A Mirror The Image We Cast!

We Prefer To Go Deformed And Distorted All Our Lives Rather Than Not Resemble The Portrait Of Ourselves Which We Ourselves Have First Drawn. It’s Absurd. We Run The Risk Of Warping What’s Best In Us

Life Never Presents Us With Anything Which May Not Be Looked Upon As A Fresh Starting Point, No Less Than As A Termination.

It Is Essential To Persuade The Soldier That Those He Is Being Urged To Massacre Are Bandits Who Do Not Deserve To Live; Before Killing Other Good, Decent Fellows Like Himself, His Gun Would Fall From His Hands.

"let The Dead Bury The Dead." There Is Not A Single Word Of Christ To Which The Christian Religion Has Paid Less Attention.

Do Not Scorn Little Victories.

In Other People's Company I Felt I Was Dull, Gloomy, Unwelcome, At Once Bored And Boring.

Obsessions Of The Orient, Of The Desert, Of Its Ardor And Its Emptiness, Of The Shadows Of Palm Gardens, Of The Garments White And Wide - Obsessions Where The Senses Go Berserk, Where Nerves Are Exasperated, And Which Made Me, At The Onset Of Each Night, Believe Sleep Impossible.

A Caterpillar Who Seeks To Know Himself Would Never Become A Butterfly

If The Flower Were Not Attached To Its Stem, It Would Flee At The Approach Of Man, Like The Insect Or The Bird; For The Attribute Of Man On The Earth, At Least As Long As He Does Not Better Understand His Role, Is To Worry And Frighten What He Is Not Interested In Taming For Utilitarian Purposes. Man Is Skillful In Mistreating Everything He Can Use

It Is Not Becoming To Lay To Virtue The Weariness Of Old Age.

Art Is A Collaboration Between God And The Artist, And The Less The Artist Does The Better.

Creative Collaboration

There Are Many Things That Seem Impossible Only So Long As One Does Not Attempt Them.

The Most Important Things To Say Are Those Which Often I Did Not Think Necessary For Me To Say - Because They Were Too Obvious.

So Long As We Live Among Men, Let Us Cherish Humanity.

There Are Admirable Potentialities In Every Human Being.

Most Often It Happens That One Attributes To Others Only The Feelings Of Which One Is Capable Oneself.

Though A Revolution May Call Itself "national," It Always Marks The Victory Of A Single Party.

The Itch Is A Mean, Unconfessable, Ridiculous Malady; One Can Pity Someone Who Is Suffering ; Someone Who Wants To Scratch Himself Makes One Laugh.

Man: The Most Complex Of Beings, And Thus The Most Dependent Of Beings. On All That Made You Up, You Depend.

It Is Only In Adventure That Some People Succeed In Knowing Themselves - In Finding Themselves.

Never Have I Been Able To Settle In Life. Always Seated Askew, As If On The Arm Of A Chair; Ready To Get Up, To Leave.

Most Often People Seek In Life Occasions For Persisting In Their Opinions Rather Than For Educating Themselves.

The Important Thing Is Being Capable Of Emotions, But To Experience Only One's Own Would Be A Sorry Limitation.

If One Could Recover The Uncompromising Spirit Of One's Youth, One's Greatest Indignation Would Be For What One Has Become.

To Understand Is Nothing, But To Be Understood-that Is The Problem And The Source Of Anguish. The Soul Throbs And Would Have The Other Know-but Can Not And Feels Isolated. Then Come Gestures, Words, Awkward Explanations And Material Symbols For Imponderable Outbursts Of Feeling-and The Soul Despairs.

Do Not Do What Someone Else Could Do As Well As You. Do Not Say, Do Not Write What Someone Else Could Say, Could Write As Well As You. Care For Nothing In Yourself But What You Feel Exists Nowhere Else. And, Out Of Yourself Create, Impatiently Or Patiently, The Most Irreplaceable Of Beings.

One Should Want Only One Thing And Want It Constantly. Then One Is Sure Of Getting It. But I Desire Everything, And Consequently Get Nothing.

Prejudices Are The Props Of Civilization.

The Only Real Education Comes From What Goes Counter To You.

Woe To These People Who Have No Appetite For The Very Dish That Their Age Serves Up.

The Wise Man Is Astonished By Anything.

The Want Of Logic Annoys. Too Much Logic Bores. Life Eludes Logic, And Everything That Logic Alone Constructs Remains Artificial And Forced.

True Kindness Presupposes The Faculty Of Imagining As One's Own The Suffering And Joys Of Others.

I Am Lost If I Attempt To Take Count Of Chronology. When I Think Over The Past, I Am Like A Person Whose Eyes Cannot Properly Measure Distances And Is Liable To Think Things Extremely Remote Which On Examination Prove To Be Quite Near.

It Is One Of Life's Laws That As Soon As One Door Closes Another Opens. But The Tragedy Is We Look At The Closed Door And Disregard The Open One.

I Believe That In Every Circumstance I Have Been Able To See Rather Clearly The Most Advantageous Course I Could Follow, Which Is Very Rarely The One I Did Follow.

Christianity, Above All, Consoles; But There Are Naturally Happy Souls Who Do Not Need Consolation. Consequently Christianity Begins By Making Such Souls Unhappy, For Otherwise It Would Have No Power Over Them.

I Do Not Love Men: I Love What Devours Them.

I Prefer Granting With A Good Grace What I Know I Shan't Be Able To Prevent.

Most Quarrels Amplify A Misunderstanding.

The Difficulty Comes From This, That Christianity (christian Orthodoxy) Is Exclusive And That Belief In Its Truth Excludes Belief In Any Other Truth. It Does Not Absorb; It Repulses.

Faith Can Move Mountains; True: Mountains Of Stupidity.

No Encounter Occured That Day, And I Was Glad Of It; I Took Out Of My Pocket A Little Homer I Had Not Opened Since Leaving Marseilles, Reread Three Lines Of The Odyssey, Learned Them By Heart; Then, Finding Sufficient Sustenance In Their Rhythm And Reveling In Them At Leisure, I Closed The Book And Remained, Trembling, More Alive Than I Had Thought Possible, My Mind Numb With Happiness.

The Truth Is That As Soon As We Are No Longer Obliged To Earn Our Living, We No Longer Know What To Do With Our Life And Recklessly Squander It.

Nothing Is More Fatal To Happiness Than The Remembrance Of Happiness.

Each Thought Becomes An Anxiety In My Brain. I Am Becoming The Ugliest Of All Things: A Busy Man.

'therefore' Is A Word The Poet Must Not Know.

One Does Not Discover New Lands Without Consenting To Lose Sight Of The Shore For A Very Long Time.

There Is No Feeling So Simple That It Is Not Immediately Complicated And Distorted By Introspection.

The Most Gifted Natures Are Perhaps Also The Most Trembling.

The Scholar Seeks Truth, The Artist Finds.

How Do You Know That The Fruit Is Ripe? Simply Because It Leaves The Branch.

Actions Whose Motives He Cannot Understand That Is, Actions Not Prompted By The Hope Of Profit.

Old Hands Soil, It Seems, Whatever They Caress, But They Too Have Their Beauty When They Are Joined In Prayer. Young Hands Were Made For Caresses And The Sheathing Of Love. It Is A Pity To Make Them Join Too Soon.

The Only Really Christian Art Is That Which, Like St. Francis, Does Not Fear Being Wedded To Poverty. This Rises Far Above Art-as-ornament.

Without Mysticism Man Can Achieve Nothing Great.

Our Judgements About Things Vary According To The Time Left Us To Live -that We Think Is Left Us To Live.

Understanding Is The Beginning Of Approving.

The Individual Never Asserts Himself More Than When He Forgets Himself.

To Love The Truth Is To Refuse To Let Oneself Be Saddened By It.

The Most Beaten Paths Are Certainly The Surest, But Do Not Hope To Start Much Game On Them.

Oh, Would That My Mind Could Let Fall Its Dead Ideas, As The Tree Does Its Withered Leaves! And Without Too Many Regrets, If Possible! Those From Which The Sap Has Withdrawn. But, Good Lord, What Beautiful Colors!

Art That Submits To Orthodoxy, To Even The Soundest Doctrines, But Lacks Imagination And Deep Self-expression Is Lost Leaving Only The Craftsmanship.

Too Chaste A Youth Leads To A Dissolute Old Age.

What Another Would Have Done As Well As You, Do Not Do It. What Another Would Have Said As Well As You, Do Not Say It; What Another Would Have Written As Well, Do Not Write It. Be Faithful To That Which Exists Nowhere But In Yourself - And Thus Make Yourself Indispensable.

A Work Of Art Is An Exaggeration.

Laws And Rules Of Conduct Are For The State Of Childhood; Education Is An Emancipation.

One Doesn't Discover New Lands Without Consenting To Lose Sight, For A Very Long Time, Of The Shore.

A Desire For Truth Is By No Means A Need For Certitude And It Would Be Unwise To Confuse One With The Other.

Understand That The Only Possession Of Any Value Is Life.

Only Those Things Are Beautiful Which Are Inspired By Madness And Written By Reason.

Mozart's Joy Is Made Of Serenity, And A Phrase Of His Music Is Like A Calm Thought; His Simplicity Is Merely Purity. It Is A Crystalline Thing In Which All The Emotions Play A Role, But As If Already Celestially Transposed. Moderation Consists In Feeling Emotions As The Angels Do.

The Artist Who Is After Success Lets Himself Be Influenced By The Public. Generally Such An Artist Contributes Nothing New, For The Public Acclaims Only What It Already Knows, What It Recognizes.

The Greatest Intelligence Is Precisely The One That Suffers The Most From Its Own Limitations.

A Straight Path Never Leads Anywhere Except To The Objective.

Everything Has Been Said Before, But Since Nobody Listens We Have To Keep Going Back And Beginning All Over Again.

To Be Sure, Theory Is Useful. But Without Warmth Of Heart And Without Love It Bruises The Very Ones It Claims To Save.

The Great Artist Is One Whom Constraint Exalts, For Whom The Obstacle Is A Springboard.

To Win Ones Joy Through Struggle Is Better Than To Yield To Melancholy.

The Less Intelligent The White Man Is, The More Stupid He Thinks The Black.

We No Longer Admit Any Other Truth Than That Which Is Expedient; For There Is No Worse Error Than The Truth That May Weaken The Arm That Is Fighting.

Pay Attention Only To The Form; Emotion Will Come Spontaneously To Inhabit It. A Perfect Dwelling Always Finds An Inhabitant. The Artist's Business Is To Build The Dwelling; As For The Inhabitant, It Is Up To The Reader To Provide Him.

But Can One Still Make Resolutions When One Is Over Forty? I Live According To Twenty-year-old Habits.

An Artist Cannot Get Along Without A Public; And When The Public Is Absent, What Does He Do? He Invents It, And Turning His Back On His Age, He Looks Toward The Future For What The Present Denies.

When You Have Nothing To Say, Or To Hide, There Is No Need To Be Prudent.

Often With Good Sentiments We Produce Bad Literature.

Be Faithful To That Which Exists Within Yourself.

True Intelligence Very Readily Conceives Of An Intelligence Superior To Its Own; And This Is Why Truly Intelligent Men Are Modest.

To What A Degree The Same Past Can Leave Different Marks - And Especially Admit Of Different Interpretations.

Believe Those Who Seek The Truth, Doubt Those Who Find It; Doubt All, But Do Not Doubt Yourself.

The True Return To Nature Is The Definitive Return To The Elements-death.

I Can't Expect Others To Share My Virtues. It's Good Enough For Me If They Share My Vices.

Whoever Starts Out Toward The Unknown Must Consent To Venture Alone.

The Novelist Does Not Long To See The Lion Eat Grass. He Realizes That One And The Same God Created The Wolf And The Lamb, Then Smiled, “seeing That His Work Was Good.”

The Anxiety We Have For The Figure We Cut, For Our Personage, Is Constantly Cropping Out. We Are Showing Off And Are Often More Concerned With Making A Display Than With Living. Whoever Feels Observed Observes Himself.

Too Chaste An Adolescence Makes For A Dissolute Old Age. It Is Doubtless Easier To Give Up Something One Has Known Than Something One Imagines.

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