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It were well if there were fewer heroes for I scarcely ever heard of any, excepting Hercules, but did more mischief than good. These overgrown mortals commonly use their will with their right hand and their reason with their left.

Jeremy Collier

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Jeremy Collier
Age: 76 †
Born: 1650
Born: January 1
Died: 1726
Died: January 1
Literary Critic
Priest
Theatre Critic
Writer
County of Cambridge
Reason
Fewer
Ever
Mortals
Overgrown
Wells
Hero
Excepting
Well
Hand
Hercules
Right
Heard
Scarcely
Good
Use
Commonly
Left
Mischief
Hands
Heroes

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A man by tumbling his thoughts, and forming them into expressions, gives them a new fermentation, which works them into a finer body.
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Heroes are a mischievous race.
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True courage is the result of reasoning. A brave mind is always impregnable.
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Despair makes a despicable figure, and descends from a mean original. 'Tis the offspring of fear, of laziness and impatience it argues a defect of spirit and resolution, and oftentimes of honesty, too. I would not despair unless I saw misfortune recorded in the book of fate, and signed and sealed by necessity.
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Everyone has a fair turn to be as great as he pleases.
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Patient waiting is often the highest way of doing God's will.
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Perpetual pushing and assurance put a difficulty out of countenance and make a seeming difficulty gives way.
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Truth is the band of union and the basis of human happiness. Without this virtue there is no reliance upon language, no confidence in friendship, no security in promises and oaths.
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A man may as well expect to grow stronger by always eating as wiser by always reading.
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What can be more honorable than to have courage enough to execute the commands of reason and conscience,--to maintain the dignity of our nature, and the station assigned us?
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Self-conceit is a weighty quality, and will sometimes bring down the scale when there is nothing else in it. It magnifies a fault beyond proportion, and swells every omission into an outrage.
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Envy is of all others the most ungratifying and disconsolate passion. There is power for ambition, pleasure for luxury, and pelf even for covetousness but envy gets no reward but vexation.
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Flattery is an ensnaring quality, and leaves a very dangerous impression. It swells a man's imagination, entertains his vanity, and drives him to a doting upon his own person.
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Books support us in our solitude and keep us from being a burden to ourselves.
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To believe a business impossible is the way to make it so. How many feasible projects have miscarried through despondency, and been strangled in their birth by a cowardly imagination.
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Learning gives us a fuller conviction of the imperfections of our nature which one would think, might dispose us to modesty.
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Without discretion, people may be overlaid with unreasonable affection, and choked with too much nourishment.
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He that would be a master must draw from the life as well as copy from originals, and join theory and experience together.
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Envy is an ill-natured vice, and is made up of meanness and malice. It wishes the force of goodness to be strained, and the measure of happiness abated. It laments over prosperity, and sickens at the sight of health. It oftentimes wants spirit as well as good nature.
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Envy, like a cold prison, benumbs and stupefies and, conscious of its own impotence, folds its arms in despair.
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