You've never lived until you've almost died. For those who have fought for it, life has a flavor the protected shall never know.

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We live always under the weight of the old and odious customs... of our barbarous ancestors.

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Abstinence is the worst form of perversion.

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Love is always love, come whence it may. A heart that beats at your approach, an eye that weeps when you go away are things so rare, so sweet, so precious that they must never be despised.

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There is only one good thing in life, and that is love.

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Life is a slope. As long as you're going up you're always looking towards the top and you feel happy, but when you reach it, suddenly you can see the road going downhill and death at the end of it all. It's slow going up and quick going down.

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Travel, like dreams, is a door that opens from the real world into a world that is yet to be discovered

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Of all the passions, the only one that seems respectable to me is the passion for food

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You have the army of mediocrities followed by the multitude of fools. As the mediocrities and the fools always form the immense majority, it is impossible for them to elect an intelligent government.

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Whether we are describing a king, an assassin, a thief, an honest man, a prostitute, a nun, a young girl, or a stallholder in a market, it is always ourselves that we are describing.

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