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People believe a little too easily that the function of the sun is to help the cabbages along.

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As humanity perfects itself, man becomes degraded. When everything is reduced to the mere counter-balancing of economic interests, what room will ther...more

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...and the country is like a great unfolded mantle with a green velvet cape bordered with a fringe of silver.

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In the end idealism annoyed Bouvard. ‘I don’t want any more of it: the famous cogito is a bore. The ideas of things are taken for the things themselve...more

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What wretched poverty of language! To compare stars to diamonds!

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Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

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At other times, at the edge of a wood, especially at dusk, the trees themselves would assume strange shapes: sometimes they were arms rising heavenwar...more