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If All Feeling For Grace And Beauty Were Not Extinguished In The Mass Of Mankind At The Actual Moment, Such A Method Of Locomotion As Cycling Could Never Have Found Acceptance; No Man Or Woman With The Slightest Aesthetic Sense Could Assume The Ludicrous Position Necessary For It.

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If All Feeling For

Ouida

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If All Feeling For Grace And Beauty Were Not Extinguished In The Mass Of Mankind At The Actual Moment, Such A Method Of Locomotion As Cycling Could Never Have Found Acceptance; No Man Or Woman With The Slightest Aesthetic Sense Could Assume The Ludicrous Position Necessary For It.

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It Is A Kind Of Blindness--poverty. We Can Only Grope Through Life When We Are Poor, Hitting And Maiming Ourselves Against Every Angle.

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The Philosopher Stands At His Desk In The Lecture Hall, And Demonstrates Away The Soul Of Man, And With Exact Thought Measures Out His Atoms And Resolves Him Back To Gas And Air. But The Revolutionary, Below In The Crowd, Hears, And Only Translates What He Hears Thus To His Brethren: 'let Us Drink While We May; Property Is Robbery; This Life Is All; Let Us Kill And Eat; There Is No God.

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Sport Inevitably Creates Deadness Of Feeling. No One Could Take Pleasure In It Who Was Sensitive To Suffering; And Therefore Its Pursuit By Women Is Much More To Be Regretted Than Its Pursuit By Men, Because Women Pursue Much More Violently And Recklessly What They Pursue At All.

Indifference Is The Invincible Grant Of The World.

Opposition To A Man In Love Is Like Oil To Fire.

Great Men Have Always Had Dogs.

To Vice, Innocence Must Always Seem Only A Superior Kind Of Chicanery.

There Is Nothing That You May Not Get People To Believe In If You Will Only Tell It Them Loud Enough And Often Enough, Till The Welkin Rings With It.

Coleridge Cried; "o God, How Glorious It Is To Live!" Renan Asks, "o God, When Will It Be Worth While To Live?" In Nature We Echo The Poet; In The World We Echo The Thinker.

Scandals Are Like Dandelion Seeds--they Are Arrow-headed, And Stick Where They Fall, And Bring Forth And Multiply Fourfold.

Excess Always Carries Its Own Retribution.

It Is Hard Work To Be Good When You Are Very Little And Very Hungry, And Have Many Sticks To Beat You, And No Mother's Lips To Kiss You.

The Loss Of Our Illusions Is The Only Loss From Which We Never Recover.

Intensely Selfish People Are Always Very Decided As To What They Wish. They Do Not Waste Their Energies In Considering The Good Of Others.

I Have Met A Thousand Scamps; But I Never Met One Who Considered Himself So. Self-knowledge Isn't So Common.

We Only See Clearly When We Have Reached The Depths Of Woe.

Is There A More Pitiable Spectacle Than That Of A Wife Contending With Others For That Charm In Her Husband's Sight Which No Philters And No Prayers Can Renew When Once It Has Fled Forever? Women Are So Unwise. Love Is Like A Bird's Song Beautiful And Eloquent When Heard In Forest Freedom, Harsh And Worthless In Repetition When Sung From Behind Prison Bars. You Cannot Secure Love By Vigilance, By Environment, By Captivity. What Use Is It To Keep The Person Of A Man Beside You If His Soul Be Truant From You?

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Christianity Has Ever Been The Enemy Of Human Love.

Fancy Tortures More People Than Does Reality

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Belief Of Some Sort Is The Lifeblood Of Art.

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Women Hope That The Dead Love May Revive; But Men Know That Of All Dead Things None Are So Past Recall As A Dead Passion.

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A Great Love Is An Absolute Isolation And An Absolute Absorption.

The Radical Defect In Christianity Is That It Tried To Win The World By A Bribe, And It Has Become A Nullity.

Emulation Is Active Virtue; Envy Is Brooding Malice.

A Little Scandal Is An Excellent Thing; Nobody Is Ever Brighter Or Happier Of Tongue Than When He Is Making Mischief Of His Neighbors.

Count Art By Gold, And It Fetters The Feet It Once Winged.

Fame Nowadays Is Little Else But Notoriety.

A Cruel Story Runs On Wheels, And Every Hand Oils The Wheels As They Run.

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Histories In Blazonry And Poems In Stone.

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Dissimulation Is The Only Thing That Makes Society Possible; Without Its Amenities The World Would Be A Bear-garden.

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Most Crimes Are Sanctioned In Some Form Or Other When They Take Grand Names.

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We Do Not Want To Think. We Do Not Want To Hear. We Do Not Care About Anything. Only Give Us A Good Dinner And Plenty Of Money, And Let Us Outshine Our Neighbors. There Is The Nineteenth Century Gospel.

I Have Known Men Who Have Been Sold And Bought A Hundred Times, Who Have Only Got Very Fat And Very Comfortable In The Process Of Exchange.

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Friendship Is Such An Elastic Word. There Never Was An Age When It Stood For So Many Things In Private, And Was Yet So Absolutely Non-existent In Fact.

The Christian Religion, Outwardly And Even In Intention Humble, Does, Without Meaning It, Teach Man To Regard Himself As The Most Important Of All Created Things. Man Surveys The Starry Heavens And Hears With His Ears Of The Plurality Of Worlds; Yet His Religion Bids Him Believe That His Alone Out Of These Innumerable Spheres Is The Object Of His Master's Love And Sacrifice.

A New Life Is Innocent, Like An Empty Page, Ready For The Hard Lessons Ahead. Gennita Low, Facing Fear To Vice, Innocence Must Always Seem Only A Superior Kind Of Chicanery.

Youth Without Faith Is A Day Without Sun.

Even Of Death Christianity Has Made A Terror Which Was Unknown To The Gay Calmness Of The Pagan And The Stoical Repose Of The Indian.

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Friendship Needs To Be Rooted In Respect, But Love Can Live Upon Itself Alone

Age Is Nothing But Death That Is Conscious.

Love Is Cruel As The Grave.

Charity In Various Guises Is An Intruder The Poor See Often; But Courtesy And Delicacy Are Visitants With Which They Are Seldom Honored.

Indifference Is The Invisible Giant Of The World.

Nothing Is So Pleasant ... As To Display Your Worldly Wisdom In Epigram And Dissertation, But It Is A Trifle Tedious To Hear Another Person Display Theirs.

Charity Is A Flower Not Naturally Of Earthly Growth, And It Needs Manuring With A Promise Of Profit.

Woman's Fatal Weakness Is To Desire Sympathy And Comprehension. --"wanda

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No Great Talker Ever Did Any Great Thing Yet, In This World.

The Scorn Of Genius Is The Most Arrogant And The Most Boundless Of All Scorn.

Fame! It Is The Flower Of A Day, That Dies When The Next Sun Rises.

The Fire Of True Enthusiasm Is Like The Fires Of Baku, Which No Water Can Ever Quench, And Which Burn Steadily On From Night To Day, And Year To Year, Because Their Well-spring Is Eternal.

There Is No Applause That So Flatters A Man As That Which He Wrings From Unwilling Throats.

[on Christianity:] Its Lip-service And Its Empty Rites Have Made It The Easiest Of All Tasks For The Usurer To Cloak His Cruelties, The Miser To Hide His Avarice, The Lawyer To Condone His Lies, The Sinner Of All Social Sins To Purchase The Social Immunity From Them By Outward Deference To Churches.

There Is A Self-evident Axiom, That She Who Is Born A Beauty Is Half Married.

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