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My Mother Took Too Much, A Great Deal Too Much, Care Of Me; She Over-educated, Over-instructed, Over-dosed Me With Premature Lessons Of Prudence: She Was So Afraid That I Should Ever Do A Foolish Thing, Or Not Say A Wise One, That She Prompted My Every Word, And Guided My Every Action. So I Grew Up, Seeing With Her Eyes, Hearing With Her Ears, And Judging With Her Understanding, Till, At Length, It Was Found Out That I Had Not Eyes, Ears Or Understanding Of My Own.

-Maria Edgeworth

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My Mother Took Too

Maria Edgeworth

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My Mother Took Too Much, A Great Deal Too Much, Care Of Me; She Over-educated, Over-instructed, Over-dosed Me With Premature Lessons Of Prudence: She Was So Afraid That I Should Ever Do A Foolish Thing, Or Not Say A Wise One, That She Prompted My Every Word, And Guided My Every Action. So I Grew Up, Seeing With Her Eyes, Hearing With Her Ears, And Judging With Her Understanding, Till, At Length, It Was Found Out That I Had Not Eyes, Ears Or Understanding Of My Own.

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Persons Not Habituated To Reason Often Argue Absurdly, Because, From Particular Instances, They Deduce General Conclusions, And Extend The Result Of Their Limited Experience Of Individuals Indiscriminately To Whole Classes.

Wit Is Often Its Own Worst Enemy.

Habit Is, To Weak Minds, A Species Of Moral Predestination, From Which They Have No Power To Escape.

Idleness, Ennui, Noise, Mischief, Riot, And A Nameless Train Of Mistaken Notions Of Pleasure, Are Often Classed, In A Young Man's Mind, Under The General Head Of Liberty.

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.

Those Who Have Lived In A House With Spoiled Children Must Have A Lively Recollection Of The Degree Of Torment They Can Inflict Upon All Who Are Within Sight Or Hearing.

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.

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How Impossible It Is Not To Laugh In Some Company, Or To Laugh In Others.

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?

Love Occupies A Vast Space In A Woman's Thoughts, But Fills A Small Portion In A Man's Life.

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.

The Labor Of Thinking Was So Great To Me, That Having Once Come To A Conclusion Upon Any Subject, I Would Rather Persist In It, Right Or Wrong, Than Be At The Trouble Of Going Over The Process Again To Revise And Rectify My Judgment.

Confidence Is The Best Proof Of Love.

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My Mother Took Too Much, A Great Deal Too Much, Care Of Me; She Over-educated, Over-instructed, Over-dosed Me With Premature Lessons Of Prudence: She Was So Afraid That I Should Ever Do A Foolish Thing, Or Not Say A Wise One, That She Prompted My Every Word, And Guided My Every Action. So I Grew Up, Seeing With Her Eyes, Hearing With Her Ears, And Judging With Her Understanding, Till, At Length, It Was Found Out That I Had Not Eyes, Ears Or Understanding Of My Own.

Tyranny And Injustice Always Produce Cunning And Falsehood.

Alarmed Successively By Every Fashionable Medical Terror Of The Day, She Dosed Her Children With Every Specific Which Was Publicly Advertised Or Privately Recommended...the Consequence Was, That The Dangers, Which Had At First Been Imaginary, Became Real: These Little Victims Of Domestic Medicine Never Had A Day's Health: They Looked, And Were, More Dead Than Alive.

Sir Patrick Rackrent Lived And Died A Monument Of Old Irish Hospitality.

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Forgive And Forget

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A Man Who Sells His Conscience For His Interest Will Sell It For His Pleasure. A Man Who Will Betray His Country Will Betray His Friend.

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The Human Heart, At Whatever Age, Opens To The Heart That Opens In Return.

Illness Was A Sort Of Occupation To Me, And I Was Always Sorry To Get Well.

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Health Can Make Money, But Money Cannot Make Health.

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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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Nature's Hasty Conscience.

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I ... Practiced All The Arts Of Apology, Evasion, And Invisibility, To Which Procrastinators Must Sooner Or Later Be Reduced.

Procrastination

There Is No Reasoning With Imagination.

When Driven To The Necessity Of Explaining, I Found That I Did Not Myself Understand What I Meant.

Business Was His Aversion; Pleasure Was His Business.

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