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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.

-Andre Gide

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An Artist Cannot Get

Andre Gide

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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.

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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.

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

When Everything Belongs To Everyone, Nobody Will Take Care Of Anything.

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

Sadness Is Almost Never Anything But A Form Of Fatigue.

The Work Of Art Is The Exaggeration Of An Idea.

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.

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

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

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

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

We Should Enjoy This Summer, Flower By Flower, As If It Were To Be The Last One We’ll See.

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.

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.

Man's Responsibility Increases As That Of The Gods Decreases.

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.

Nothing Is So Silly As The Expression Of A Man Who Is Being Complimented.

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

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

Complete Possession Is Proved Only By Giving. All You Are Unable To Give Possesses You.

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

The Truth Is, I Hoped The Cure Would Dislike Me. I Tried To Think Of Disagreeable Things To Say To Him -- I Could Hit On Nothing That Wasn't Charming. It's Wonderful How Hard I Find It Not To Be Fascinating.

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

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

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.

Are You Then Unable To Recognize Unless It Has The Same Sound As Yours?

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.

Man Is More Interesting Than Men. God Made Him And Not Them In His Image. Each One Is More Precious Than All.

Prejudices Are The Props Of Civilization.

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.

I Have Never Produced Anything Good Except By A Long Succession Of Slight Efforts.

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.

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

They Establish Distinctions And Reserves Which I Cannot Apply To Myself, For I Exist Only As A Whole; My Only Claim Is To Be Natural, And The Pleasure I Feel In An Action, I Take As A Sign That I Ought To Do It.

The Most Gifted Natures Are Perhaps Also The Most Trembling.

Chastity More Rarely Follows Fear, Or A Resolution, Or A Vow, Than It Is The Mere Effect Of Lack Of Appetite And, Sometimes Even, Of Distaste.

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

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.

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.”

An Unprejudiced Mind Is Probably The Rarest Thing In The World; To Nonprejudice I Attach The Greatest Value.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Often With Good Sentiments We Produce Bad Literature.

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

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

Do Not Scorn Little Victories.

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

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

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

The Nationalist Has A Broad Hatred And A Narrow Love.

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

The World Will Be Saved By One Or Two People.

Other People's Appetites Easily Appear Excessive When One Doesn't Share Them.

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

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

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

Whither Should We Aim If Not Towards God?

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

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

The Loveliest Creations Of Men Are Persistently Painful. What Would Be The Description Of Happiness? Nothing, Except What Prepares And Then What Destroys It.

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

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

Obtain From Yourself All That Makes Complaining Useless. No Longer Implore From Others What You Yourself Can Obtain.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Man! The Most Complex Of Creatures, And For This Reason The Most Dependant Of Creatures. On Everything That Has Formed You, You May Depend. Do Not Balk At This Apparent Slavery....a Debtor To Many, You Pay For Your Advantages By The Same Number Of Dependencies. Understand That Independence Is A Form Of Poverty; That Many Things Claim You, That Many Also Claim Kinship With You.

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

Those Who Have Never Been Ill Are Incapable Of Real Sympathy For A Great Many Misfortunes

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.

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

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

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

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

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

It Is With Noble Sentiments That Bad Literature Gets Written.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One Is Always Wrong To Open A Conversation With The Devil, For, However He Goes About It, He Always Insists Upon Having The Last Word.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Fear Of Ridicule Begets The Worst Cowardice.

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

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.

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

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

The Wise Man Is Astonished By Anything.

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

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

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

The Wise Man Is He Who Constantly Wonders Afresh.

Be Faithful To That Which Exists Within Yourself.

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!

What Seems Different In Yourself; That's The Rare Thing You Possess. The One Thing That Gives Each Of Us His Worth, And That's Just What We Try To Suppress. And We Claim To Love Life.

Most Quarrels Amplify A Misunderstanding.

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.

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

Without Mysticism Man Can Achieve Nothing Great.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

The Pettiness Of A Mind Can Be Measured By The Pettiness Of Its Adoration Or Its Blasphemy.

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.

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

In Hell There Is No Other Punishment Than To Begin Over And Over Again The Tasks Left Unfinished In Your Lifetime.

I Would Like The Events Never To Be Told Directly By The Author, But Rather To Be Introduced (and Several Times, From Various Angles) By Those Among The Characters On Whom They Will Have Had Any Effect. I Would Like Those Events, In The Account They Will Make Of Them, To Appear Slightly Distorted; A Kind Of Interest Stems, For The Reader, From The Simple Fact That He Should Need To Restore. The Story Requires His Collaboration In Order To Properly Take Shape.

The Color Of Truth Is Gray.

Nothing Blocks Happiness Like Happiness Remembered.

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

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

Solitude Is Bearable Only With God.

True Eloquence Forgoes Eloquence.

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

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

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.

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

Understand That The Only Possession Of Any Value Is Life.

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.

Drunkenness Is Never Anything But A Substitute For Happiness.

To Read A Writer Is For Me Not Merely To Get An Idea Of What He Says, But To Go Off With Him And Travel In His Company.

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 .

Too Chaste A Youth Leads To A Dissolute Old Age.

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

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

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

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?

Often The Best In Us Springs From The Worst In Us.

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

Through Fear Of Resembling One Another, Through Horror Of Having To Submit, Through Uncertainty As Well, Through Skepticism And Complexity, There Is A Multitude Of Individual Little Beliefs For The Triumph Of Strange Little Individuals.

Sin Is Whatever Obscures The Soul.

Not Everyone Can Be An Orphan.

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.

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

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.

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

What I Dislike Least In My Former Self Are The Moments Of Prayer.

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

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

Only Fools Don't Contradict Themselves

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Understanding Is The Beginning Of Approving.

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

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.

The Public Always Prefers To Be Reassured. There Are Those Whose Job This Is. There Are Only Too Many.

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.

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

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.

Profound Optimism Is Always On The Side Of The Tortured.

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.

Faith Can Move Mountains; True: Mountains Of Stupidity.

I Wished For Nothing Beyond Her Smile, And To Walk With Her Thus, Hand In Hand, Along A Sun Warmed, Flower Bordered Path.

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

From The Satisfaction Of Desire There May Arise, Accompanying Joy And As It Were Sheltering Behind It, Something Not Unlike Despair.

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

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

The Young People Who Come To Me In The Hope Of Hearing Me Utter A Few Memorable Maxims Are Quite Disappointed. Aphorisms Are Not My Forte, I Say Nothing But Banalities.... I Listen To Them And They Go Away Delighted.

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

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

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

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.

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

Nothing Excellent Can Be Done Without Leisure.

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

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

How Much More Sensuality Invites To Art Than Does Sentimentality.

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