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The Trees Have Inquisitive Eyes, Haven't They? -that Is, Seem As If They Had. And The River Says,-'why Do Ye Trouble Me With Your Looks?' And You Seem To See Numbers Of To-morrows Just All In A Line, The First Of Them The Biggest And Clearest, The Others Getting Smaller And Smaller As They Stand Further Away; But They All Seem Very Fierce And Cruel And As If They Said, 'i'm Coming! Beware Of Me! Beware Of Me!

-Thomas Hardy

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The Trees Have Inquisitive

Thomas Hardy

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The Trees Have Inquisitive Eyes, Haven't They? -that Is, Seem As If They Had. And The River Says,-'why Do Ye Trouble Me With Your Looks?' And You Seem To See Numbers Of To-morrows Just All In A Line, The First Of Them The Biggest And Clearest, The Others Getting Smaller And Smaller As They Stand Further Away; But They All Seem Very Fierce And Cruel And As If They Said, 'i'm Coming! Beware Of Me! Beware Of Me!

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That Cold Accretion Called The World, So Terrible In The Mass, Is So Non Formidable, Even Pitiable, In Its Units.

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To Dance With A Man Is To Concentrate A Twelvemonth's Regulation Fire Upon Him In The Fragment Of An Hour. To Pass To Courtship Without Acquaintance, To Pass To Marriage Without Courtship, Is A Skipping Of Terms Reserved For Those Alone Who Tread This Royal Road.

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Men Thin Away To Insignificance And Oblivion Quite As Often By Not Making The Most Of Good Spirits When They Have Them As By Lacking Good Spirits When They Are Indispensable.

...she Moved About In A Mental Cloud Of Many-coloured Idealities, Which Eclipsed All Sinister Contingencies By Its Brightness.

A Strong Woman Who Recklessly Throws Away Her Strength, She Is Worse Than A Weak Woman Who Has Never Had Any Strength To Throw Away.

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Is A Woman A Thinking Unit At All, Or A Fraction Always Wanting Its Integer?

This Hobble Of Being Alive Is Rather Serious, Don’t You Think So?

Clare Had Studied The Curves Of Those Lips So Many Times That He Could Reproduce Them Mentally With Ease: And Now, As They Again Confronted Him, Clothed With Colour And Life, They Sent An Aura Over His Flesh, A Breeze Through His Nerves, Which Wellnigh Produced A Qualm; And Actually Produced, By Some Mysterious Physiological Process, A Prosaic Sneeze.

Sometimes I Shrink From Your Knowing What I Have Felt For You, And Sometimes I Am Distressed That All Of It You Will Never Know.

She Was Of The Stuff Of Which Great Men's Mothers Are Made. She Was Indispensable To High Generation, Hated At Tea Parties, Feared In Shops, And Loved At Crises.

All Romances End At Marriage.

My Eyes Were Dazed By You For A Little, And That Was All.

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Tis Because We Be On A Blighted Star, And Not A Sound One, Isn't It Tess?

So Do Flux And Reflux--the Rhythm Of Change--alternate And Persist In Everything Under The Sky.

Backlock, A Poet Blind From His Birth, Could Describe Visual Objects With Accuracy; Professor Sanderson, Who Was Also Blind, Gave Excellent Lectures On Color, And Taught Others The Theory Of Ideas Which They Had And He Had Not. In The Social Sphere These Gifted Ones Are Mostly Women; They Can Watch A World Which They Never Saw, And Estimate Forces Of Which They Have Only Heard. We Call It Intuition.

A Lover Without Indiscretion Is No Lover At All.

Bathsheba Loved Troy In The Way That Only Self-reliant Women Love When They Abandon Their Self-reliance. When A Strong Woman Recklessly Throws Away Her Strength She Is Worse Than A Weak Woman Who Has Never Any Strength To Throw Away. One Source Of Her Inadequacy Is The Novelty Of The Occasion. She Has Never Had Practice In Making The Best Of Such A Condition. Weakness Is Doubly Weak By Being New.

You Are Joseph The Dreamer Of Dreams, Dear Jude. And A Tragic Don Quixote. And Sometimes You Are St. Stephen, Who, While They Were Stoning Him, Could See Heaven Opened. Oh, My Poor Friend And Comrade, You'll Suffer Yet!

Don't Think Of What's Past!" Said She. "i Am Not Going To Think Outside Of Now. Why Should We! Who Knows What Tomorrow Has In Store?

It Was Terribly Beautiful To Tess Today, For Since Her Eyes Last Fell Upon It She Had Learnt That The Serpent Hisses Where The Sweet Birds Sing.

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...our Impulses Are Too Strong For Our Judgement Sometimes

He Wished She Knew His Impressions; But He Would As Soon Have Thought Of Carrying An Odour In A Net As Of Attempting To Convey The Intangibilities Of His Feeling In The Coarse Meshes Of Language. So He Remained Silent.

Beauty Lay Not In The Thing, But In What The Thing Symbolized.

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Nobody Had Beheld The Gravitation Of The Two Into One

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A Novel Is An Impression, Not An Argument; And There The Matter Must Rest.

You Are Absolutely The Most Ethereal, Least Sensual Woman I Ever Knew To Exist Without Inhuman Sexlessness.

Like The British Constitution, She Owes Her Success In Practice To Her Inconsistencies In Principle.

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Women Are So Strange In Their Influence That They Tempt You To Misplaced Kindness.

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It Was The Touch Of The Imperfect Upon The Would-be Perfect That Gave The Sweetness, Because It Was That Which Gave The Humanity

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The Sudden Disappointment Of A Hope Leaves A Scar Which The Ultimate Fulfillment Of That Hope Never Entirely Removes.

The Offhand Decision Of Some Commonplace Mind High In Office At A Critical Moment Influences The Course Of Events For A Hundred Years.

How I Have Tried And Tried To Be A Splendid Woman, And How Destiny Has Been Against Me! ...i Do Not Deserve My Lot! ...o, The Cruelty Of Putting Me Into This Ill-conceived World! I Was Capable Of Much; But I Have Been Injured And Blighted And Crushed By Things Beyond My Control! O, How Hard It Is Of Heaven To Devise Such Tortures For Me, Who Have Done No Harm To Heaven At All!

By Experience", Says Roger Ascham, "we Find Out A Short Way By A Long Wandering." Not Seldom That Long Wandering Unfits Us For Further Travel, And Of What Use Is Our Experience To Us Then?

That Man's Silence Is Wonderful To Listen To.

When Women Are Secret They Are Secret Indeed; And More Often Then Not They Only Begin To Be Secret With The Advent Of A Second Lover.

I Want To Question My Belief, So That What Is Left After I Have Questioned It, Will Be Even Stronger.

Ladies Know What To Guard Against, Because They Read Novels That Tell Them Of These Tricks.

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Let Truth Be Told - Women Do As A Rule Live Through Such Humiliations, And Regain Their Spirits, And Again Look About Them With An Interested Eye. While There's Life There's Hope Is A Connviction Not So Entirely Unknown To The "betrayed" As Some Amiable Theorists Would Have Us Believe.

In The Ill-judged Execution Of The Well-judged Plan Of Things The Call Seldom Produces The Comer, The Man To Love Rarely Coincides With The Hour For Loving

Black Chaos Comes, And The Fettered Gods Of The Earth Say, Let There Be Light.

It Was Still Early, And The Sun's Lower Limb Was Just Free Of The Hill, His Rays, Ungenial And Peering, Addressed The Eye Rather Than The Touch As Yet.

Did It Never Strike Your Mind That What Every Woman Says, Some Women May Feel?

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Weathers This Is The Weather The Cuckoo Likes, And So Do I; When Showers Betumble The Chestnut Spikes, And Nestlings Fly; And The Little Brown Nightingale Bills His Best, And They Sit Outside At 'the Traveller's Rest,' And Maids Come Forth Sprig-muslin Drest, And Citizens Dream Of The South And West, And So Do I. This Is The Weather The Shepherd Shuns, And So Do I; When Beeches Drip In Browns And Duns, And Thresh And Ply; And Hill-hid Tides Throb, Throe On Throe, And Meadow Rivulets Overflow, And Drops On Gate Bars Hang In A Row, And Rooks In Families Homeward Go, And So Do I.

Give The Enemy Not Only A Road For Flight, But Also A Means Of Defending It.

She Was At That Modulating Point Between Indifference And Love, At The Stage Called Having A Fancy For. It Occurs Once In The History Of The Most Gigantic Passions, And It Is A Period When They Are In The Hands Of The Weakest Will.

You Could Sometimes See Her Twelfth Year In Her Cheeks, Or Her Ninth Sparkling From Her Eyes; And Even Her Fifth Would Flit Over The Curves Of Her Mouth Now And Then.

...the Figure Near At Hand Suffers On Such Occasions, Because It Shows Up Its Sorriness Without Shade; While Vague Figures Afar Off Are Honored, In That Their Distance Makes Artistic Virtues Of Their Stains. In Considering What Tess Was Not, He Overlooked What She Was, And Forgot That The Defective Can Be More Than The Entire.

It Is Difficult For A Woman To Define Her Feelings In Language Which Is Chiefly Made By Men To Express Theirs.

We Ought To Have Lived In Mental Communion, And No More.

It Was Then That The Ecstasy And The Dream Began, In Which Emotion Was The Matter Of The Universe, And Matter But An Adventitious Intrusion Likely To Hinder You From Spinning Where You Wanted To Spin.

Never In Her Life – She Could Swear It From The Bottom Of Her Soul – Had She Ever Intended To Do Wrong; Yet These Hard Judgments Had Come. Whatever Her Sins, They Were Not Sins Of Intention, But Of Inadvertence, And Why Should She Have Been Punished So Persistently?

If The Story-tellers Could Ha' Got Decency And Good Morals From True Stories, Who'd Have Troubled To Invent Parables?

Why Didn’t You Tell Me There Was Danger? Why Didn’t You Warn Me? Ladies Know What To Guard Against, Because They Read Novels That Tell Them Of These Tricks; But I Never Had The Chance Of Discovering In That Way; And You Did Not Help Me!

And At Home By The Fire, Whenever You Look Up There I Shall Be— And Whenever I Look Up, There Will Be You. -gabriel Oak

I Agree To The Conditions, Angel; Because You Know Best What My Punishment Ought To Be; Only - Only - Don't Make It More Than I Can Bear!

When Yellow Lights Struggle With Blue Shades In Hairlike Lines.

Of Love It May Be Said, The Less Earthly The Less Demonstrative. In Its Absolutely Indestructible Form It Reaches A Profundity In Which All Exhibition Of Itself Is Painful.

...nameless, Unknown To Me As You Were, I Couldn't Forget Your Voice!' 'for How Long?' 'o - Ever So Long. Days And Days.' 'days And Days! Only Days And Days? O, The Heart Of A Man! Days And Days!' 'but, My Dear Madam, I Had Not Known You More Than A Day Or Two. It Was Not A Full-blown Love - It Was The Merest Bud - Red, Fresh, Vivid, But Small. It Was A Colossal Passion In Embryo. It Never Returned.

I Am The Family Face; Flesh Perishes, I Live On, Projecting Trait And Trace Through Time To Times Anon, And Leaping From Place To Place Over Oblivion.

Dialect Words Are Those Terrible Marks Of The Beast To The Truly Genteel.

Indifference To Fate Which, Though It Often Makes A Villain Of A Man, Is The Basis Of His Sublimity When It Does Not.

He Looked And Smelt Like Autumn's Very Brother, His Face Being Sunburnt To Wheat-colour, His Eyes Blue As Corn-flowers, His Sleeves And Leggings Dyed With Fruit-stains, His Hands Clammy With The Sweet Juice Of Apples, His Hat Sprinkled With Pips, And Everywhere About Him The Sweet Atmosphere Of Cider Which At Its First Return Each Season Has Such An Indescribable Fascination For Those Who Have Been Born And Bred Among The Orchards.

It Was That Period In The Vernal Quarter When We May Suppose The Dryads To Be Waking For The Season. The Vegetable World Begins To Move And Swell And The Saps To Rise, Till In The Completest Silence Of Lone Gardens And Trackless Plantations, Where Everything Seems Helpless And Still After The Bond And Slavery Of Frost, There Are Bustlings, Strainings, United Thrusts, And Pulls-all-together, In Comparison With Which The Powerful Tugs Of Cranes And Pulleys In A Noisy City Are But Pigmy Efforts.

The Sky Was Clear - Remarkably Clear - And The Twinkling Of All The Stars Seemed To Be But Throbs Of One Body, Timed By A Common Pulse.

If An Offense Come Out Of The Truth, Better Is It That The Offense Come Than That The Truth Be Concealed.

The Value Of Old Age Depends Upon The Person Who Reaches It. To Some Men Of Early Performance It Is Useless. To Others, Who Are Late To Develop, It Just Enables Them To Finish The Job.

Did You Say The Stars Were Worlds, Tess?" "yes." "all Like Ours?" "i Don't Know, But I Think So. They Sometimes Seem To Be Like The Apples On Our Stubbard-tree. Most Of Them Splendid And Sound - A Few Blighted." "which Do We Live On - A Splendid One Or A Blighted One?" "a Blighted One.

People Go On Marrying Because They Can't Resist Natural Forces, Although Many Of Them May Know Perfectly Well That They Are Possibly Buying A Month's Pleasure With A Life's Discomfort.

My Wicked Heart Will Ramble On In Spite Of Myself. (arabella)

The Smile On Your Mouth Was The Deadest Thing Alive Enough To Have Strength To Die. (from "neutral Tones")

There Is Always An Inertia To Be Overcome In Striking Out A New Line Of Conduct – Not More In Ourselves, It Seems, Than In Circumscribing Events, Which Appear As If Leagued Together To Allow No Novelties In The Way Of Amelioration.

You Ride Well, But You Don't Kiss Nicely At All.

The Defective Can Be More Than The Entire.

Bless Thy Simplicity, Tess

Well, These Sad And Hopeless Obstacles Are Welcome In One Sense, For They Enable Us To Look With Indifference Upon The Cruel Satires That Fate Loves To Indulge In.

...he Seemed To Approach The Grave As An Hyperbolic Curve Approaches A Line, Less Directly As He Got Nearer, Till It Was Doubtful If He Would Ever Reach It At All.

There Are Accents In The Eye Which Are Not On The Tongue, And More Tales Come From Pale Lips Than Can Enter An Ear. It Is Both The Grandeur And The Pain Of The Remoter Moods That They Avoid The Pathway Of Sound.

It May Have Been Observed That There Is No Regular Path For Getting Out Of Love As There Is For Getting In. Some People Look Upon Marriage As A Short Cut That Way, But It Has Been Known To Fail.

Pessimism Is Playing The Sure Game. You Cannot Lose At It; You May Gain. It Is The Only View Of Life In Which You Can Never Be Disappointed. Having Reckoned What To Do In The Worst Possible Circumstances, When Better Arise, As They May, Life Becomes Child's Play.

Once Let A Maiden Admit The Possibility Of Her Being Stricken With Love For Some One At A Certain Hour And Place, And The Thing Is As Good As Done.

Teach Me To Live, That I May Dread The Grave As Little As My Bed. Teach Me To Die.

I May Do Some Good Before I Am Dead--be A Sort Of Success As A Frightful Example Of What Not To Do; And So Illustrate A Moral Story.

Well, What I Mean Is That I Shouldn't Mind Being A Bride At A Wedding, If I Could Be One Without Having A Husband.

War Makes Rattling Good History.

To Dwellers In A Wood, Almost Every Species Of Tree Has Its Voice As Well As Its Feature.

Their Position Was Perhaps The Happiest Of All Positions In The Social Scale, Being Above The Line At Which Neediness Ends, And Below The Line At Which The Convenances Begin To Cramp Natural Feeling, And The Stress Of Threadbare Modishness Makes Too Little Of Enough.

Why It Was That Upon This Beautiful Feminine Tissue, Sensitive As Gossamer, And Practically Blank As Snow As Yet, There Should Have Been Traced Such A Coarse Pattern As It Was Doomed To Receive; Why So Often The Coarse Appropriates The Finer Thus, The Wrong Man The Woman, The Wrong Women The Man, Many Years Of Analytical Philosophy Have Failed To Explain To Our Sense Of Order

You Have Never Loved Me As I Love You--never--never! Yours Is Not A Passionate Heart--your Heart Does Not Burn In A Flame! You Are, Upon The Whole, A Sort Of Fay, Or Sprite-- Not A Woman!

Her Affection For Him Was Now The Breath And Life Of Tess's Being; It Enveloped Her As A Photosphere, Irradiated Her Into Forgetfulness Of Her Past Sorrows, Keeping Back The Gloomy Spectres That Would Persist In Their Attempts To Touch Her—doubt, Fear, Moodiness, Care, Shame. She Knew That They Were Waiting Like Wolves Just Outside The Circumscribing Light, But She Had Long Spells Of Power To Keep Them In Hungry Subjection There.

In The Ill-judged Execution Of The Well-judged Plan Of Things The Call Seldom Produces The Comer, The Man To Love Rarely Coincides With The Hour For Loving. Nature Does Not Often Say 'see!' To Her Poor Creature At A Time When Seeing Can Lead To Happy Doing; Or Reply 'here!' To A Body's Cry Of 'where?' Till The Hide-and-seek Has Become An Irksome Outworn Game.

That Mercy Towards One Set Of Creatures Was Cruelty Towards Another Sickened His Sense Of Harmony. As You Got Older, And Felt Yourself To Be At The Center Of Your Time, And Not At A Point In Its Circumference, As You Had Felt When You Were Little, You Were Seized With A Sort Of Shuddering, He Perceived. All Around You There Seemed To Be Something Glaring, Garish, Rattling, And The Noises And Glares Hit Upon The Little Cell Called Your Life, And Shook It, And Warped It.

I Have Felt Lately, More And More, That My Present Way Of Living Is Bad In Every Respect.

They Spoke Very Little Of Their Mutual Feeling; Pretty Phrases And Warm Expressions Being Probably Unnecessary Between Such Tried Friends.

The Business Of The Poet And The Novelist Is To Show The Sorriness Underlying The Grandest Things And The Grandeur Underlying The Sorriest Things.

George's Son Had Done His Work So Thoroughly That He Was Considered Too Good A Workman To Live, And Was, In Fact, Taken And Tragically Shot At Twelve O'clock That Same Day—another Instance Of The Untoward Fate Which So Often Attends Dogs And Other Philosophers Who Follow Out A Train Of Reasoning To Its Logical Conclusion, And Attempt Perfectly Consistent Conduct In A World Made Up So Largely Of Compromise.

I Shall Do One Thing In This Life-one Thing Certain-this Is, Love You, And Long Of You, And Keep Wanting You Till I Die.

War Makes Good History But Peace Is Poor Reading.

He Knelt And Bent Lower, Till Her Breath Warmed His Face, And In A Moment His Cheek Was In Contact With Hers. She Was Sleeping Soundly, And Upon Her Eyelashes There Lingered Tears.

Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled, Neither Let It Be Afraid.

Loss Of A Loved One

Meanwhile, The Trees Were Just As Green As Before; The Birds Sang And The Sun Shone As Clearly Now As Ever. The Familiar Surroundings Had Not Darkened Because Of Her Grief, Nor Sickened Because Of Her Pain. She Might Have Seen That What Had Bowed Her Head So Profoundly -the Thought Of The World's Concern At Her Situation- Was Found On An Illusion. She Was Not An Existence, An Experience, A Passion, A Structure Of Sensations, To Anybody But Herself.

That One True Heart Was Left Behind! What Feeling Do We Ever Find, To Equal Among Human Kind , A Dog's Fidelity!

You, And Those Like You, Take Your Fill Of Pleasure On Earth By Making The Life Of Such As Me Bitter And Black With Sorrow; And Then It Is A Fine Thing, When You Have Had Enough Of That, To Think Of Securing Your Pleasure In Heaven By Becoming Converted!

Do Not Do An Immoral Thing For Moral Reasons.

You Overrate My Capacity Of Love. I Don't Posess Half The Warmth Of Nature You Believe Me To Have. An Unprotected Childhood In A Cold World Has Beaten Gentleness Out Of Me.

My Weakness Has Always Been To Prefer The Large Intention Of An Unskilful Artist To The Trivial Intention Of An Accomplished One: In Other Words, I Am More Interested In The High Ideas Of A Feeble Executant Than In The High Execution Of A Feeble Thinker.

It Appears That Ordinary Men Take Wives Because Possession Is Not Possible Without Marriage, And That Ordinary Women Accept Husbands Because Marriage Is Not Possible Without Possession

The First Cause Worked Automatically Like A Somnambulist, And Not Reflectively Like A Sage.

The Perfect Woman, You See [is] A Working-woman; Not An Idler; Not A Fine Lady; But One Who [uses] Her Hands And Her Head And Her Heart For The Good Of Others.

O, You Have Torn My Life All To Pieces... Made Me Be What I Prayed You In Pity Not To Make Me Be Again!

Tess Of The D Urbervilles

And Yet To Every Bad There Is A Worse.

I Am The Family Face; Flesh Perishes, I Live On.

There's A Friendly Tie Of Some Sort Between Music And Eating.

You Concede Nothing To Me And I Have To Concede Everything To You.

A Woman Would Rather Visit Her Own Grave Than The Place Where She Has Been Young And Beautiful After She Is Aged And Ugly.

The Trees Have Inquisitive Eyes, Haven't They? -that Is, Seem As If They Had. And The River Says,-'why Do Ye Trouble Me With Your Looks?' And You Seem To See Numbers Of To-morrows Just All In A Line, The First Of Them The Biggest And Clearest, The Others Getting Smaller And Smaller As They Stand Further Away; But They All Seem Very Fierce And Cruel And As If They Said, 'i'm Coming! Beware Of Me! Beware Of Me!

The Beauty Or Ugliness Of A Character Lay Not Only In Its Achievements, But In Its Aims And Impulses; Its True History Lay, Not Among Things Done, But Among Things Willed.

You Don't Talk Quite Like A Girl Who Has Had No Advantages.

To Have Lost Is Less Disturbing Than To Wonder If We May Possibly Have Won; And Eustacia Could Now, Like Other People At Such A Stage, Take A Standing-point Outside Herself, Observe Herself As A Disinterested Spectator, And Think What A Sport For Heaven This Woman Eustacia Was.

Time Changes Everything Except Something Within Us Which Is Always Surprised By Change.

That Aspects Are Within Us; And Who Seems Most Kingly Is The King.

Do You Know That I Have Undergone Three Quarters Of This Labour Entirely For The Sake Of The Fourth Quarter?

Measurement Of Life Should Be Proportioned Rather To The Intensity Of The Experience Than To Its Actual Length.

There Was Now A Distinct Manifestation Of Morning In The Air, And Presently The Bleared White Visage Of A Sunless Winter Day Emerged Like A Dead-born Child.

Some Folk Want Their Luck Buttered.

Everybody Must Be Managed. Queens Must Be Managed. Kings Must Be Managed, For Men Want Managing Almost As Much As Women, And That's Saying A Good Deal.

Thoroughly Convinced Of The Impossibility Of His Own Suit, A High Resolve Constrained Him Not To Injure That Of Another. This Is A Lover's Most Stoical Virtue, As The Lack Of It Is A Lover's Most Venial Sin.

Though A Good Deal Is Too Strange To Be Believed, Nothing Is Too Strange To Have Happened.

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