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

More quotes by Maria Edgeworth

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There is no moment like the present. The man who will not execute his resolutions when they are fresh upon him can have no hope from them afterwards: they will be dissipated, lost, and perish in the hurry and scurry of the world, or sunk in the slough of indolence.
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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First loves are not necessarily more foolish than others but the chances are certainly against them. Proximity of time or place, a variety of accidental circumstances more than the essential merits of the object, often produce what is called first love.
Maria Edgeworth
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Now flattery can never do good twice cursed in the giving and the receiving, it ought to be.
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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I find the love of garden grows upon me as I grow older more and more. Shrubs and flowers and such small gay things, that bloom and please and fade and wither and are gone and we care not for them, are refreshing interests, in life, and if we cannot say never fading pleasures, we may say unreproved pleasures and never grieving losses.
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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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.
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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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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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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A love-match was the only thing for happiness, where the parties could any way afford it.
Maria Edgeworth
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there is no reasoning with imagination.
Maria Edgeworth
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How success changes the opinion of men!
Maria Edgeworth
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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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No man ever distinguished himself who could not bear to be laughed at.
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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According to the Asiatics, Cupid's bow is strung with bees which are apt to sting, sometimes fatally, those who meddle with it.
Maria Edgeworth
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Love occupies a vast space in a woman's thoughts, but fills a small portion in a man's life.
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