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1625 Essayist Quotes

There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.

Cruel Else Grow Just
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The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.

Function Higher HigherLevel Level
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Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists.
Even Facts Forever Lost
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Culture's worth huge, huge risks. Without culture we're all totalitarian beasts.

Beasts Culture Huge Risks
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With the pride of the artist, you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of your defiance.

Against Artist Blow Defiance
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There are four stages in a marriage. First there's the affair, then the marriage, then children and finally the fourth stage, without which you cannot know a woman, the divorce.

Affair Cannot Children Divorce
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The highest prize in a world of men is the most beautiful woman available on your arm and living there in her heart loyal to you.

Arm Available Beautiful BeautifulWoman
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When I read it, I don't wince, which is all I ever ask for a book I write.
Ask Book Ever IWrite
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It's not a good idea to put your wife into a novel; not your latest wife anyway.
Anyway Good GoodIdea Idea
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Tough guys don't dance. You had better believe it.

Believe Better Dance Guys
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Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like putting a live grenade in the hands of a child.

Camera Child Giving Hands
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Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision. The more a man can achieve, the more he may be certain that the devil will inhabit a part of his creation.

Achieve Argue Awakens Certain
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The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.

Art Consciousness Even Exacerbate
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Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit.

Always Bit Dying Every
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If a person is not talented enough to be a novelist, not smart enough to be a lawyer, and his hands are too shaky to perform operations, he becomes a journalist.

Becomes Enough Hands He
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America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.

America Big Center Eye
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Each day a few more lies eat into the seed with which we are born, little institutional lies from the print of newspapers, the shock waves of television, and the sentimental cheats of the movie screen.

Born Cheats Day Each
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Hip is the sophistication of the wise primitive in a giant jungle.
Giant Hip Jungle Primitive
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The difference between writing a book and being on television is the difference between conceiving a child and having a baby made in a test tube.

Baby Being Between Book
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The horror of the Twentieth Century was the size of each new event, and the paucity of its reverberation.

Century Each Event Horror
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In America all too few blows are struck into flesh. We kill the spirit here, we are experts at that. We use psychic bullets and kill each other cell by cell.

America Blows Bullets Cell
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I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.

About Act Bad Creative
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A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

Borders Democracy Discovers Far
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Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

Books Closest Come Ever
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Alimony is the curse of the writing class.
Alimony Class Curse Writing
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In America few people will trust you unless you are irreverent.

America Few FewPeople Irreverent
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I'm hostile to men, I'm hostile to women, I'm hostile to cats, to poor cockroaches, I'm afraid of horses.

Afraid Cats Cockroaches Horses
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Growth, in some curious way, I suspect, depends on being always in motion just a little bit, one way or another.

Always Another Being Bit
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Masculinity is not something given to you, but something you gain. And you gain it by winning small battles with honor.
Battles Gain Given Honor
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Because there is very little honor left in American life, there is a certain built-in tendency to destroy masculinity in American men.

American AmericanLife AmericanMen Because
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Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most.
Count History Individuals Most
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I hate everything which is not in myself.

Everything Hate Myself Which
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The Irish are the only men who know how to cry for the dirty polluted blood of all the world.

AllTheWorld Blood Cry Dirty
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The natural role of twentieth-century man is anxiety.

Anxiety Man Natural Role
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I had a quick grasp of the secret to sanity, it had become the ability to hold the maximum of impossible combinations in one's mind.

Ability Become Combinations Grasp
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I don't think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we shrink from the immensity of the purpose we are here for.

Absurd Here Huge IThink
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What characterizes a member of a minority group is that he is forced to see himself as both exceptional and insignificant, marvelous and awful, good and evil.

Awful Both Evil Exceptional
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It's not the sentiments of men which make history but their actions.

Actions History Make Men
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God like Us suffers the ambition to make a destiny more extraordinary than was conceived for Him, yes God is like Me, only more so.

Ambition Conceived Destiny Extraordinary
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We can never know for certain where our prayers are likely to go, nor from whom the answers will come. Just when we think we are at our nearest to God, we could be assisting the Devil.

Answers Certain Come Could
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Obsession is the single most wasteful human activity, because with an obsession you keep coming back and back and back to the same question and never get an answer.

Activity Answer Back Because
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It's a man's world, and you men can have it.

Man Men World You
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I was right not to be afraid of any thief but myself, who will end by leaving me nothing.
Afraid Any End Leaving
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Human life itself may be almost pure chaos, but the work of the artist is to take these handfuls of confusion and disparate things, things that seem to be irreconcilable, and put them together in a frame to give them some kind of shape and meaning.

Almost Artist Chaos Confusion
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Physical infidelity is the signal, the notice given, that all fidelities are undermined.

Given Infidelity Notice Physical
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They had both noticed that a life of dissipation sometimes gave to a face the look of gaunt suffering spirituality that a life of asceticism was supposed to give and quite often did not.

Both Did Face Gave
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I have not much interest in anyone's personal history after the tenth year, not even my own. Whatever one was going to be was all prepared before that.

After Anyone Before Even
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Our being is subject to all the chances of life. There are so many things we are capable of, that we could be or do. The potentialities are so great that we never, any of us, are more than one-fourth fulfilled.

Any Being Capable Chances
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Experience is what really happens to you in the long run; the truth that finally overtakes you.
Experience Finally Happens Long
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It is such a relief to be told the truth.
Relief Told Such Truth
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