Is it not worthy of tears that, when the number of worlds is infinite, I have not yet become lord of a single one?

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  What great or glorious deed could we have performed if we had sat at ease in Macedonia?

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  If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.

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  From my father I received life, and from my teacher I learned how to live well.

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  Out of constables we have made grandees, idiots have shared out the honours, thieves are making rich men for us, dark souls have called themselves patriots.

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  Every generation, no doubt, believes itself called to remake the world. Mine knows that it will not remake it.

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  I want to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city one day suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book.

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