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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
Personality
Masses
Either
Copies
Poor
Produced
Three
Finally
Great
Material
Clumsily
Things
Tools
Foils
Materials
Personalities
Mass
Regarded

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I came into the world two months too soon, I was in such a hurry.
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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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It is useless to send armies against ideas.
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I was not given to looking at life in a rosy light.
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Nietzsche says that as soon as he had read a single page of Schopenhauer, he knew he would read every page of him and pay heed to every word, even to the errors he might find. Every intellectual aspirant will be able to name men whom he has read in this way.
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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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I became an ardent, but never a specially good, dancer.
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I was always hearing that I was pale and thin and small.
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The loathing of mankind is a force that surprises and overwhelms one, fed by hundreds of springs concealed his subconsciousness. One only detects its presence after having long entertained it unawares.
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On the whole, the world was friendly. It chiefly depended on whether one were good or not.
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When I was a little boy I did not, of course, trouble much about my appearance.
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What is public opinion? It is private indolence.
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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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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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But I did not find any positive inspiration in my studies until I approached my nineteenth year.
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The society of the Culture-Philistines makes life a burden to exceptional men.
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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 gradually dawned upon me that there was no one more difficult to please than my mother.
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I encountered among my comrades the most varied human traits, from frankness to reserve, from goodness, uprightness and kindness, to brutality and baseness.
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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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