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Books only spoil the originality of genius. Very well for those who can't think for themselves - But when one has made up one's opinions, there is no use in reading.

Maria Edgeworth

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Maria Edgeworth
Age: 81 †
Born: 1768
Born: January 1
Died: 1849
Died: May 22
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
Oxon.
Eliza Edgeworth
Thinking
Books
Reading
Use
Wells
Spoil
Book
Originality
Well
Opinions
Made
Genius
Think
Opinion

More quotes by Maria Edgeworth

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We perfectly agreed in our ideas of traveling we hurried from place to place as fast as horses and wheels, and curses and guineas, could carry us.
Maria Edgeworth
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[On collectors of quotations:] How far our literature may in future suffer from these blighting swarms, will best be conceived by a glance at what they have already withered and blasted of the favourite productions of our most popular poets.
Maria Edgeworth
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Did the Warwickshire militia, who were chiefly artisans, teach the Irish to drink beer, or did they learn from the Irish how to drink whiskey?
Maria Edgeworth
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When the mind is full of any one subject, that subject seems to recur with extraordinary frequency - it appears to pursue or to meet us at every turn: in every conversation that we hear in every book we open, in every newspaper we take up, the reigning idea recurs and then we are surprised, and exclaim at these wonderful coincidences.
Maria Edgeworth
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A love-match was the only thing for happiness, where the parties could any way afford it.
Maria Edgeworth
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I ... practiced all the arts of apology, evasion, and invisibility, to which procrastinators must sooner or later be reduced.
Maria Edgeworth
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Obtain power, then, by all means power is the law of man make it yours.
Maria Edgeworth
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Sir Patrick Rackrent lived and died a monument of old Irish hospitality.
Maria Edgeworth
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Beauty is a great gift of heaven not for the purpose of female vanity, but a great gift for one who loves, and wishes to be beloved.
Maria Edgeworth
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There are two sorts of content one is connected with exertion, the other with habits of indolence. The first is a virtue the other, a vice.
Maria Edgeworth
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An orator is the worse person to tell a plain fact.
Maria Edgeworth
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Possessed, as are all the fair daughters of Eve, of an hereditary propensity, transmitted to them undiminished through succeeding generations, to be 'soonmoved withtheslightesttouch of blame' very little precept and practice will confirm them in the habit, and instruct them all the maxims, of self-justification.
Maria Edgeworth
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It is quite fitting that charity should begin at home ... but then it should not end at home for those that help nobody will find none to help them in time of need.
Maria Edgeworth
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Business was his aversion Pleasure was his business.
Maria Edgeworth
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Nor elves, nor fays, nor magic charm, Have pow'r, or will, to work us harm For those who dare the truth to tell, Fays, elves, and fairies, wish them well.
Maria Edgeworth
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Surely it is much more generous to forgive and remember, than to forgive and forget.
Maria Edgeworth
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a straight line is the shortest possible line between any two points - an axiom equally true in morals as in mathematics.
Maria Edgeworth
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We cannot judge either of the feelings or of the characters of men with perfect accuracy from their actions or their appearance in public it is from their careless conversations, their half-finished sentences, that we may hope with the greatest probability of success to discover their real characters.
Maria Edgeworth
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We may make our future by the best use of the present. There is no moment like the present.
Maria Edgeworth
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why will friends publish all the trash they can scrape together of celebrated people?
Maria Edgeworth