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Time Enough for Love

Duty

“Do not confuse duty with what other people expect of you. They are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect.”

Robert A. Heinlein

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Ode to the One Who Lost

Loss

It is perhaps in failure that they possess the most majesty. Victory, when it is in accord with progress, merits the applause of the people but a heroic defeat merits their tender compassion. The one is magnificent, the other sublime. For certainly it is necessary that some one should take the part of the vanquished.

Victor Hugo

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Feminine Circularity

Friends

There’s an innate feminine circularity in the story I have to tell. In any genetic history, I’m the final clause in a periodic sentence, and that sentence begins a long time ago, in another language, and you have to read it from the beginning to get to the end, which is my arrival.

Jeffrey Eugenides

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