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

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How is it that hope so powerfully excites, and fear so absolutely depresses all our faculties?
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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.
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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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Promises are dangerous things to ask or to give.
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What a misfortune it isto be bornawoman!? Why seek for knowledge, which can prove only that our wretchedness is irremediable? If a ray of light break in upon us, it is but to make darkness more visible to show usthenew limits, the Gothic structure, theimpenetrable barriers of our prison.
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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.
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Love occupies a vast space in a woman's thoughts, but fills a small portion in a man's life.
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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.
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The unaffected language of real feeling and benevolence is easily understood, and is never ridiculous.
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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.
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If young women were not deceived into a belief that affectation pleases, they would scarcely trouble themselves to practise it so much.
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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.
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Obtain power, then, by all means power is the law of man make it yours.
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why will friends publish all the trash they can scrape together of celebrated people?
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there is no reasoning with imagination.
Maria Edgeworth
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Let the sexes mutually forgive each other their follies or, what is much better, let them combine their talents for their general advantage.
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Surely it is much more generous to forgive and remember, than to forgive and forget.
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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.
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how impossible it is not to laugh in some company, or to laugh in others.
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No man ever distinguished himself who could not bear to be laughed at.
Maria Edgeworth