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The conflict between what one is and who one is expected to be touches all of us. And sometimes, rather than reach for what one could be, we choose the comfort of the failed role, preferring to be the victim of circumstance, the person who didn't have a chance.

Merle Shain

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Merle Shain
Age: 53 †
Born: 1935
Born: January 1
Died: 1989
Died: January 1
Author
Journalist
City of Toronto
Sometimes
Circumstances
Circumstance
Choose
Failed
Roles
Victim
Chance
Expected
Rather
Reach
Didn
Conflict
Persons
Role
Preferring
Person
Comfort
Touches

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Love is short, forgetting is long, and understanding longer still.
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The roots of love sink down and deep and strike out far, and they are arteries that feed our lives, so we must see that they get the water and sun they need so they can nourish us. And when you put something good into the world, something good comes back to you.
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Cynicism is a form of cowardice, a failure of courage to hope.
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There are many pages in the book, many kinds of lives we each can live, many ways to be rich, and even more to be poor.
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One can never change the past, only the hold it has on you, and while nothing in your life is reversible, you can reverse it nevertheless.
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It takes great generosity to accept generosity.
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You can tell a lot about what a man lacks by watching what he is cynical about, and many of us are cynical about love.
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It can be much harder to be on the receiving end of a transaction than to be the one who gets to give. In fact, being given to can mean being taken from. There is a very strong connection between pride and giving, and those who do the giving get to feel that they are worthy, while those who are given to often feel that they are not.
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when you put something good into the world, something good comes back to you.
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Loving can cost a lot but not loving always costs more, and those who fear to love often find that want of love is an emptiness that robs the joy from life.
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If there are no endings, there are no beginnings and you see no new lands, so for everything that's lost, there is usually something gained.
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Loving can cost a lot but not loving always cost more.
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Compassion is the thing that leads you gently back to yourself.
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But who would rush at a benighted man, and give him two black eyes for being blind?
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One can never change the past, only the hold it has on you.
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The day you spend hoping, the day you spend waiting, the day you spend in despair, is a day in your life as much as the tomorrow you hope for, but which may never come, so betting today on tomorrow is always a bad bet.
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The answer doesn't lie in learning how to protect ourselves from life-it lies in learning how to become strong enough to let a bit more of it in.
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The romantic myth is so strong that it survives the wear and tear of marriage by simply detaching from it and floating up on ahead, and women who are rather fond of the men they married, as well as ones who are not, go through life with a bag packed for the day when the shining knight on a white charger arrives, just in case he does.
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Perhaps the old view of 'Me breadwinner, you hausfrau' worked for our grandparents, when people obligingly popped off before boring each other to death, but it won't work any longer because we are living too long and divorce is needed today to do what death acomplished more economically before.
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Men who take advantage of one woman take advantage of them all.
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