Quote

... an inaccurate use of words produces such a strange confusion in all reasoning, that in the heat of debate, the combatants, unable to distinguish their friends from their foes, fall promiscuously on both.

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
Strange
Distinguish
Friends
Produces
Words
Unable
Use
Reasoning
Promiscuously
Fall
Confusion
Combatants
Heat
Inaccurate
Debate
Foes
Produce
Foe

More quotes by Maria Edgeworth

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It is unjust and absurd of those advancing in years, to expect of the young that confidence should come all and only on their side: the human heart, at whatever age, opens only to the heart that opens in return.
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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.
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The unaffected language of real feeling and benevolence is easily understood, and is never ridiculous.
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Justice satisfies everybody.
Maria Edgeworth
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Sir Patrick Rackrent lived and died a monument of old Irish hospitality.
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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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how impossible it is not to laugh in some company, or to laugh in others.
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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No man ever distinguished himself who could not bear to be laughed at.
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In marrying, a man does not, to be sure, marry his wife's mother and yet a prudent man, when he begins to think of the daughter, would look sharp at the mother ay, and back to the grandmother too, and along the whole female line of ancestry.
Maria Edgeworth
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Bishop Wilkins prophesied that the time would come when gentlemen, when they were to go on a journey, would call for their wings as regularly as they call for their boots.
Maria Edgeworth
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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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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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Those who are animated by hope can perform what would seem impossibilities to those who are under the depressing influence of fear.
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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why will friends publish all the trash they can scrape together of celebrated people?
Maria Edgeworth
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Hope can produce the finest and most permanent springs of action.
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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Politeness only teaches us to save others from unnecessary pain.... You are not bound by politeness to tell any falsehoods.
Maria Edgeworth
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Promises are dangerous things to ask or to give.
Maria Edgeworth