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The masses are only to be regarded as one of three things: either as copies of great personalities, bad copies, clumsily produced in a poor material, or as foils to the great, or finally as their tools

Georg Brandes

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Georg Brandes
Age: 85 †
Born: 1842
Born: February 4
Died: 1927
Died: February 19
Autobiographer
Journalist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Philosopher
University Teacher
Writer
København
Georg Morris Cohen Brandes
Morris Cohen
Poor
Produced
Three
Finally
Great
Material
Clumsily
Things
Tools
Foils
Materials
Personalities
Mass
Regarded
Personality
Masses
Either
Copies

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When I was a little boy I did not, of course, trouble much about my appearance.
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The appalling thing about war is that it kills all love of truth.
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The crowd will follow a leader who marches twenty paces ahead of them, but if he is a thousand paces ahead of them, they will neither see nor follow him.
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The society of the Culture-Philistines makes life a burden to exceptional men.
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What is public opinion? It is private indolence.
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I was always hearing that I was pale and thin and small.
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The Danish glee: the national version of cheerfulness.
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Just about this time, when in imagination I was so great a warrior, I had good use in real life for more strength, as I was no longer taken to school by the nurse, but instead had myself to protect my brother, two years my junior.
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It was jolly in the country. A cow and little pigs to play with and milk warm from the cow.
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I was not afraid of what I did not like. To overcome dislike of a thing often satisfied one's feeling of honour.
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The stream of time sweeps away errors, and leaves the truth for the inheritance of humanity.
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I did not know what it was to be happy for a whole day at a time, scarcely for an hour.
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I became an ardent, but never a specially good, dancer.
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I came into the world two months too soon, I was in such a hurry.
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But when I was twelve years old I caught my first strong glimpse of one of the fundamental forces of existence, whose votary I was destined to be for life - namely, Beauty.
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A love for humanity came over me, and watered and fertilised the fields of my inner world which had been lying fallow, and this love of humanity vented itself in a vast compassion.
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It is useless to send armies against ideas.
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But I did not find any positive inspiration in my studies until I approached my nineteenth year.
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I was not given to looking at life in a rosy light.
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That a literature in our time is living is shown in that way that it debates problems.
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