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Being consistent meant not departing from convictions already formulated being a leader meant making other persons accept these convictions. It was a narrow track, and a one-way, but a person might travel a considerable distance on it. A number of dictators have.

Jessamyn West

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Jessamyn West
Age: 81 †
Born: 1902
Born: July 18
Died: 1984
Died: February 22
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Indiana
United States
Mary Jessamyn West
Numbers
Distance
Dictators
Leader
Meant
Considerable
Making
Travel
Convictions
Women
Accept
Dictator
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Leadership
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Conviction
Formulated
Way
Already
Track
Departing

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We can love an honest rogue, but what is more offensive than a false saint?
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Nothing is so dear as what you're about to leave.
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If you want a baby, have a new one. Don't baby the old one.
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With enough libraries, all content is free.
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A good time for laughing is when you can.
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A rattlesnake that doesn't bite teaches you nothing.
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The conversation of two people remembering, if the memory is enjoyable to both, rocks on like music or lovemaking. There is a rhythm and a predictability to it that each anticipates and relishes.
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Justice is a terrible but necessary thing.
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The West is color. Its colors are animal rather than vegetable, the colors of earth and sunlight and ripeness.
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Somehow I have the feeling that in some book is the great treasure I've been looking for all my life.
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It is not easy to be solitary unless you are also born ruthless. Every solitary repudiates someone.
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Memory is a magnet. It will pull to it and hold only material nature has designed it to attract.
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Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.
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Knowledge of what you love somehow comes to you you don’t have to read nor analyze nor study. If you love a thing enough, knowledge of it seeps into you, with particulars more real than any chart can furnish.
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Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely necessary.
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You make what seems a simple choice: choose a man or a job or a neighborhood- and what you have chosen is not a man or a job or a neighborhood, but a life.
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A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself.
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In their sympathies, children feel nearer animals than adults. They frolic with animals, caress them, share with them feelings neither has words for. Have they ever stroked any adult with the love they bestow on a cat? Hugged any grownup with the ecstasy they feel when clasping a puppy?
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The source of one's joy is also often the source of one's sorrow.
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