He filled a shelf with a small army of books and read and read; but none of it made sense. .. They were all subject to various cramping limitations: those of the past were outdated, and those of the present were obsessed with the past.

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Better the illusions that exalt us than ten thousand truths.

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My dreams, my dreams! What has become of their sweetness? What indeed has become of my youth?

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..depression still kept guard on him, and chased after him like a shadow - or like a faithful wife.

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Play interests me very much," said Hermann: "but I am not in the position to sacrifice the necessary in the hope of winning the superfluous.

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Two fixed ideas can no more exist together in the moral world than two bodies can occupy one and the same place in the physical world.

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Thus people--so it seems to me-- Become good friends from sheer ennui.

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The less we love her when we woo her, The more we draw a woman in,

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A deception that elevates us is dearer than a host of low truths.

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I was not born to amuse the Tsars.

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