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“requires earnest purpose, honest self-devotion, and hard work.”
Smiles argues that social reform requires committed people and sustained effort rather than money alone, joining honesty, purpose and work in one historical reform ethic.
Source note: Thrift, Chapter XIV, “Riches and Charity,” Project Gutenberg #14418. Smiles argues that money alone cannot reform conduct and says change from intemperance, improvidence and irreligion requires earnest purpose, self-devotion and hard work; that nineteenth-century reform context is preserved.
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“Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult.”
Voice: Narrator voice · Narrator
The narrator warns that invention and distortion can come more easily than an accurate rendering of reality, especially when a writer prefers a pleasing picture.
Source note: Adam Bede, Chapter XVII; the sentence appears in Eliot’s narrator-level discussion of realism and the difficulty of telling a simple story truthfully.
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“life is the end and aim of consumption.”
Consumption is judged by what it ultimately does for human life, making economic activity a means rather than an end in itself within Ruskin’s argument.
Source note: Unto This Last, fourth essay; Project Gutenberg #36541. The line follows Ruskin’s distinction between production and consumption and retains the nineteenth-century political-economy setting.
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“Words should serve the fact, and not substitute themselves for it”
Language is assigned a supporting role: words should clarify reality instead of becoming an impressive verbal screen that displaces the thing being discussed.
Source note: The Simple Life, Chapter IV, “Simplicity of Speech,” Mary Louise Hendee translation, Project Gutenberg #23092; Wagner criticizes language that replaces fact with display.
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“Jargon, which is not so much bad writing as the avoidance of writing.”
Jargon is criticized as evasive language that circles around meaning instead of doing the harder work of choosing direct, responsible words.
Source note: On the Art of Writing, Lecture VI, Project Gutenberg #17470; Quiller-Couch is recalling the preceding lecture’s argument about jargon and prose.
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“It had need of me, or I would not be—I am here to strengthen the plan.”
The speaker interprets existence as evidence of a role to play, turning the question of why one is here into a claim of usefulness and participation.
Source note: Poems of Power, “I Am,” published 1903; Project Gutenberg #6667. The poem is explicitly spiritual and metaphysical, so the line remains poetic purpose language rather than proof of a predetermined cosmic assignment.