Robert Staughton Lynd quotes:
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Cut quarrels out of literature, and you will have very little history or drama or fiction or epic poetry left.
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Friendship will not stand the strain of very much good advice for very long.
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Knowledge is power only if man knows what facts not to bother with.
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There are some people who want to throw their arms round you simply because it is Christmas; there are other people who want to strangle you simply because it is Christmas.
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Most of us can remember a time when a birthday - especially if it was one's own - brightened the world as if a second sun has risen.
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I sometimes suspect that half our difficulties are imaginary and that if we kept quiet about them they would disappear.
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When the last Puritan has disappeared from the earth, the man of science will take his place as a killjoy, and we shall be given the same old advice but for different reasons.
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There is nothing that makes us feel so good as the idea that someone else is an evil-doer.
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Every man of genius is considerably helped by being dead.
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One of the greatest joys known to man is to take a flight into ignorance in search of knowledge.
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Most of us believe in trying to make other people happy only if they can be happy in ways which we approve.
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Most remarks that are worth making are commonplace remarks. The things that makes them worth saying is that we really mean them.
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[History is] the story of the magnificent rear-guard action fought during several thousand years by dogma against curiosity.
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Any of us can achieve virtue, if by virtue we merely mean the avoidance of the vices that do not attract us.
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Friendship is not going to stand the pressure of greatly great guidance for quite extensive.
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The telephone is the greatest nuisance among conveniences, the greatest convenience among nuisances.