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aef99ea
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Certainly the most destructive vice if you like, that a person can have. More than pride, which is supposedly the number one of the cardinal sins - is self pity. Self pity is the worst possible emotion anyone can have. And the most destructive. It is, to slightly paraphrase what Wilde said about hatred, and I think actually hatred's a subset of self pity and not the other way around - ' It destroys everything around it, except itself '.
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relationships
depression
morality
happiness
depression-humor
the-key-to-happiness
oscar-wilde
marriage-advice
sins
self-pity
narcissism
self-improvement
pride
vice
self-help
sin
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Stephen Fry |
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3b4bbe7
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Stop feeling sorry for yourself and you will be happy.
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philosophy
inspirational
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Stephen Fry |
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ca62da9
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I will defend the absolute value of Mozart over Miley Cyrus, of course I will, but we should be wary of false dichotomies. You do not have to choose between one or the other. You can have both. The human cultural jungle should be as varied and plural as the Amazonian rainforest. We are all richer for biodiversity. We may decide that a puma is worth more to us than a caterpillar, but surely we can agree that the habitat is all the better for..
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celebrity-worship
false-dichotomy
culture
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Stephen Fry |
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61a202b
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Hell, I am young. I am free. My teeth are clean. The sun shines. To hell with everything else
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Stephen Fry |
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a2b4f27
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It is the useless things that make life worth living and that make life dangerous too: wine, love, art, beauty. Without them life is safe, but not worth bothering with.
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life-and-living
inspirational
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Stephen Fry |
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cea0da9
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People who can change and change again are so much more reliable and happier than those who can't
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humour
happiness
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Stephen Fry |
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078ed4c
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And then I saw him and nothing was ever the same again. The sky was never the same colour, the moon never the same shape: the air never smelt the same, food never tasted the same. Every word I knew changed its meaning, everything that once was stable and firm became as insubstantial as a puff of wind, and every puff of wind became a solid thing I could feel and touch.
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Stephen Fry |
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e07d18c
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There were people who believed their opportunities to live a fulfilled life were hampered by the number of Asians in England, by the existance of a royal family, by the volume of traffic that passed by their house, by the malice of trade unions, by the power of callous employers, by the refusal of the health service to take their condition seriously, by communism, by capitalism, by atheism, by anything, in fact, but their own futile, weak-m..
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humor
satire
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Stephen Fry |
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c02c959
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I used many times to touch my own chest and feel, under its asthmatic quiver, the engine of the heart and lungs and blood and feel amazed at what I sensed was the enormity of the power I possessed. Not magical power, but real power. The power simply to go on, the power to endure, that is power enough, but I felt I had also the power to create, to add, to delight, to amaze and to transform.
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life
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Stephen Fry |
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86f8719
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How to seperate the humiliation from the loss, that's the catch. You can never be sure if what tortures you is the pain of being without someone you love or the embarrassment of admitting that you have been rejected.
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Stephen Fry |
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db6c0c5
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Self-consciousness, that's what it is. Always my abiding vice. I keep seeing myself. Me watching myself watching others watch me. How do you lose that? What's the trick?
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Stephen Fry |
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de8fb6a
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Music was a kind of penetration. Perhaps absorption is a less freighted word. The penetration or absorption of everything into itself. I don't know if you have ever taken LSD, but when you do so the doors of perception, as Aldous Huxley, Jim Morrison and their adherents ceaselessly remind us, swing wide open. That is actually the sort of phrase, unless you are William Blake, that only makes sense when there is some LSD actually swimming abo..
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Stephen Fry |
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331c983
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I was at a dinner party many years ago,sitting along from Tom Stoppard, who in those days smoked not just between courses,but between mouthfuls. An American woman watched in disbelief. "And you so intelligent!" "Excuse me?" said tom "Knowing those things are going to kill you" she said "and still you do it." "How differently I might behave" Tom said, "if immortality were an option"
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witty
smoking
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Stephen Fry |
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64a4c51
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Animals have this in common with one another: unlike humans they appear to spend every minute of every hour of every day of their lives being themselves. A tree frog (so far as we can ascertain) doesn't wake up in the morning feeling guilty that it was a bad tree frog the night before, nor does it spend any time wishing it were a wallaby or a crane fly. It just gets on with the business of being a tree frog, a job it does supremely well. We..
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Stephen Fry |
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4d33158
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Nature admits no hierarchy of beauty or usefulness or importance.
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Stephen Fry |
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31467b6
|
Once, in his first term, Cartwright had been bold enough to ask him why he was clever, what exercises he did to keep his brain fit. Healey had laughed. "It's memory, Cartwright, old dear. Memory, the mother of the Muses... at least that's what thingummy said." "Who?" "You know, what's his name, Greek poet chap. Wrote the Theogony... what he called? Begins with an 'H'." "Homer?" "No, dear. Not Homer, the other one. No, it's gone. Anyway. M..
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intelligence
memory
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Stephen Fry |
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d47bcd6
|
And please, whatever you do, don't tell us that what we do, either in love or lust, is unnatural. For one thing if what you mean by that is that animals don't do it, then you are quite simply in factual error. There are plenty of activities or qualities we could list that are most certainly unnatural if you are so mad as to think that humans are not part of nature, or so dull-witted as to believe that 'natural' means 'all natures but human ..
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Stephen Fry |
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f7b1afe
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An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them.
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Stephen Fry |
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5a05019
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I don't need you to remind me of my age, I have a bladder to do that for me.
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Stephen Fry |
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772d8ef
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Life, that can shower you with so much splendour, is unremittingly cruel to those who have given up.
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Stephen Fry |
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0c52eea
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My vocal cords are made of tweed. I give off an air of Oxford donnishness and old BBC wirelesses.
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Stephen Fry |
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cfbe126
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There's nothing worse than the British in one of their fits of morality.
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Stephen Fry |
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ae1aba0
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Greasy, miserable, British and pathetic
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Stephen Fry |
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add4d6d
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He takes coke and has slept with a prostitute - but he's a TV presenter for God's sake!
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Stephen Fry |
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f1c2fb6
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Pathetic, naive, like small noisy tantrums.
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Stephen Fry |
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69422a7
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Wit can be beautiful, because it expresses and distils an idea.
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Stephen Fry |
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1238100
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She has a very intense poetic mind. That's what makes it -- that voice that comes in.
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Stephen Fry |