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One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.

—May Sarton

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You can really learn something about a person when he's put into circumstances in which civilized values place his own identity, even his very being, in jeopardy. . . . I often think: How would a friend with whom you've drunk a lot of vodka and had a lot of fun respond when one morning you plant yourself on his doorstep and say, "Hide me. I'm being chased by the Nazis.

—Roman Polanski

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If there existed no external means for dimming their consciences, one-half of the men would at once shoot themselves, because to live contrary to one's reason is a most intolerable state, and all men of our time are in such a state.

—Leo Tolstoy

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My conscience aches, but it's going to lose the fight.

—Allanah Myles

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. . . and down they forgot as up they grew.

—e. e. cummings

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No matter how cynical you get, it's almost impossible to keep up.

—Lily Tomlin

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Those are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others.

—Groucho Marx

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morality principles flexibility
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What you have to do now is work. There's no right way to start.

—Anna Held Audette

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No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist.

—Ludwig van Beethoven

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art bargaining
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Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.

—Isaac Bashevis Singer

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vision experience creation art
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The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.

—Friedrich Nietzsche

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As I look back on what I have written, I can see that the very persons who have taken away my time are those who have given me something to say.

—Katherine Paterson

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When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: "Only stand out of my light." Perhaps someday we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light.

—John W. Gardner

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Discontent is at the root of the creative process: the most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their way.

—Eric Hoffer

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What am I in the eyes of most people? A good-for-nothing, an eccentric and disagreeable man, somebody who has no position in society and never will have. Very well, even if that were true, I should want to show by my work what there is in the heart of such an eccentric man, of such a nobody.

—Vincent Van Gogh

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